There is so much video footage on Youtube that it has become a major challenge to discover the truly great material. There is much that is good, and far more that is not-so-good; but there are definitely some treasures worth finding. Mashable offers a daily feature that they call ‘Viral Video of the Day‘, where “each day Mashable highlights one noteworthy Youtube video”.

Today’s video on Mashable offers an engaging 5 minute geography lesson. Mashable calls it, “Beautiful Time-Lapse Video Takes You Around the World in 6,237 Photos“. I’ve embedded the video below for your convenience. For more about the video, click on the link above.  I hope you enjoy Kien Lam’s ‘Speeding Around the World in Under 5 Minutes Time Lapse‘

It is paramount that teachers recognize and remember that most of their students do not learn in the same ways that they themselves learn. Simply trying harder doesn’t work if you learn differently!

I’m especially pleased when I discover new resources that put multiple means of representation together in one place!  Here’s one that gathers text, images, and videos into one place.  Of course, you can add an audio version of the text as well, with one of many readily available text-to-speech options.

Navify is a service that combines Wikipedia articles with related videos from Youtube and online images.  So, when a topic is entered into the search bar, it brings up the pertinent Wikipedia article along with videos and images on the same subject.  With the multiple means of representation offered, there is a far greater chance of engaging a wider range of learners.

The first screen shot below shows the Wikipedia article that opens when ‘tiger’ is typed into the search box.  You can see the tabs above the article for Images and Videos.  The second screen shot shows what appears when the Images tab is clicked, and the third shows the videos.

It should be noted that it is up to users to select the images and videos that are associated with an article.  For all of the search terms I entered, I was offered an extensive collection of images and videos to choose from.  Since Navify is a relatively new service, there were relatively few videos associated with any of the topics I searched.

Two other features of Navify are also worth mentioning.  The first is that users have the opportunity to comment on topics.  Secondly, related topics are suggested with search results.

TimeTube offers a search engine that will find all the YouTube videos about a particular subject for a specified period of time. TimeTube is really a mashup from Dipity, an application that will create illustrated timelines. Dipity is worth a post on its own as an impressive research and presentation tool.

For today, it is enough to highlight TimeTube. In my second last post, I wrote about Webslides from Diigo that creates visual lists of bookmarked websites. TimeTube offers something similar. It creates visual lists of YouTube videos. The lists can be viewed as timelines, in illustrated lists, and in “flipbook” format. There is also a map view available for situations where that is appropriate.

It is the flipbook format of TimeTube that has caught my fancy. As a teacher, looking for a video that might help to engage learners, TimeTube is a great tool for quickly flipping through videos in visual format. If a particular video catches my eye, I can view it instantly. If it’s not really what I’m looking for, I can quickly flip on to the next one and check that out. This tool is equally valuable for any learner who is looking for information in video format. You flip forward by clicking to the right of the video in the center, and you go back by clicking to the left.

Since TimeTubes can be embedded on other webpages, and since an embedded interactive visual is worth at least a million words, I’ve embedded one here about a subject that is dear to my heart. I entered “trains in India” into the search bar. The embedded TimeTube opens in timeline format by default. Please be sure to take a look at the other two options that are available on the bottom right corner of the screen.