Category: Hacks

How to Save YouTube Videos

I used to use a Firefox plugin to save YouTube Videos so I could use portions of them in class. When I went to access the plugin I found it had changed to using a pay plan in a rather impolite fashion. So I did a quick search around and found I could use VLC to download the Videos I needed to use snippets of.

1. How to download YouTube videos with VLC

There are plenty of third-party apps, browser extensions, and websites you can use to download YouTube videos. You also don’t need any of them, since you can do this directly through VLC:

  1. Find a video on YouTube—like this one—and copy the URL from your browser’s the address bar.
  2. In VLC, head to Media > Open Network Stream.
  3. Paste the YouTube link in the box and click Play. You might have to wait some time for the video to start. (If it’s not working, or not loading after a long while, you might want to try this fix to see if it helps.)
  4. Under Tools, click Codec Information.
  5. In the box that says Location, right-click the block of text and click Select All. Copy this text to your clipboard.
  6. Go back to your browser and paste the link in the address bar. This will open the source file directly on YouTube’s servers.
  7. Right-click the video as it plays and select Save Video As.”

https://lifehacker.com/the-best-hidden-features-of-vlc-1654434241

Moodle with a Beginner’s Mind

It is summer now, the year is behind me. I am a survivor and it is a thing to be proud of. Someone told me this and it rings true and frees me from my own ruminations about the nature of self. The summer is to reset, from the pandemic, and a brutal year.

When the year started, somewhere in July of last summer, when I was hired and dashed up to Bellevue and grabbed a laptop to use in a class they had signed me up for, and found a condo and purchased it (yes, all in the same day) and launched my year…one of the things I realized is that I was in for change and it might well be approached with a Beginner’s Mind in all facets. It was a great plan. I remain attached to it now. The pandemic was hard and it isn’t clear that any alterations to the plan would have changed that.

It is day one of summer. Three days ago began a journey that surprised me. An interesting experience with Moodle has begun. I have used Moodle since 2005 after it was chosen by students completing a research project for me into what Learning Management System I should use.

I am sure I have reloaded before and yet, often it is with courses and configurations and methods I have used in the past. This time I simply did a clean install, taking all the features in that Moodle now utilizes, keeping no legacy files, classes, or organization and just starting again.

It is configured and sits working through backups again tonight and each day I have added one thing so far and am easing into making it a productive system. Starting with making it a working system. The possibilities, of starting with a Dashboard, and having Learning Plans up front and all manners of things is simply so cool and energizing. To look at this with my experience but also beginning again, from the beginning with nothing to remain attached to, this is so cool and makes it so easy to simply flow through the short activity this morning, it was so engaging, a reminder that the entire plan was to approach things with a beginners mind was the essential piece.

The rest happened and was mean spirited and for the most part punishing. But that is fine, it need not define me or my teaching practices and teaching students.

Hacktoberfest 2017

IMG_20171101_134454I had my IB students sign up for Hacktoberfest which is open to everyone in the global community!

The learning target was to learn how to participate in the global open source software development community.

  • Seen here, the first student with a shirt awarded for making four pull requests between October 1–31 in any timezone. Pull requests can be to any public repo on GitHub. Pull requests reported by maintainers as spam or that are automated will be marked as invalid and won’t count towards the shirt.

A powerful statement about the kind of learner who can be successful in software engineering!