The World Wide Chalkboard

Sometimes you see wonderful instructional videos on the web (try teachertube sometime), but showing them to your class means being connected to the internet, dealing with large downloads, the frequent buffering problems, etc. Here’s how you can bypass that by downloading the video to your computer.

Step One - Install Firefox

Firefox is a free web browser, like Internet Explorer. But Firefox has several advantages over IE.

• It is designed to show web pages exactly the way people designed them. Sometimes IE has the text scattered in strange places, because the dimensions the web designer used don’t match what IE thinks they should be. Firefox manages to keep everything where it is supposed to be
• It is faster, and much less susceptible to hacking and viruses. IE is the big boy on the block, and that’s who the hackers attack.
• Most Important - Firefox has some wonderful attachments not available on IE. One of them is a program to download Flash video (the main medium in youtube type sites).

So to download Firefox, click here, or go to www.mozilla.com/firefox. Follow the directions for download and installing (although in some cases you may need your site tech or administrator to do the install for you).

For Tulsa teachers there is one more step. Any web browser has to detect the proxy settings for the system. Go to “Tools - Options”. Click on the “Advanced” button. Click the “Network” tab. Click the “Settings” button. Then select the option “Auto-detect proxy settings for this network”. Click “Ok” for everything. Then the browser will work on the TPS network.

I think you’ll like Firefox. Next time we’ll talk about the video download attachment.

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