Category Archives: GoogleVideo
The 11th Hour re-up: Human Impacts on Ecosystems
In 2007, Leonardo DiCaprio released his environmental call-to-arms, The 11th Hour. And it’s very good. It really knocks home the old proverb that we are not inheriting the Earth from our ancestors, but borrowing it from our children.
Update 2009: the whole film is available on GoogleVideo (as all good documentaries should be):
The movie contains contributions from the likes of Stephen Hawking, Nobel-winner Wangari Maathai and David Suzuki. Particularly useful is Gloria Flora‘s sentiment that we all vote, every day – even those who are too young to cast a ballot – by making informed choices about what we consume, spend our money on and throw away.
Watch It!
The first half of the movie is a talking-heads and imagery look at our impacts on the Earth, with plenty of soundbites and starting-points for further discussion. The political middle section describes how economic growth and interests are driving destruction. The final act is a great collection of ideas and hope – a call to arms and a realisation that the environmental movement is growing quickly and strongly. But is it going to be in time to save our species and the thousands that we drive to extinction each year?
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Now here’s Leo’s video message (including the ‘vote’ quote from Gloria Flora):
For some further reading, go to the 11th hour Action website.
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IB Biology students:
Here is a quick question sheet for the movie, linking some of the topics to the Ecology and Conservation option.
Higher Level students: pay attention to the parts about the role of trees in the environment, in particular through water-uptake. Also, do you understand how mycofiltration (using fungal mycelia) could be used to clean polluted soils?
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For good measure, here’s Linkin Park’s accompanying music video, What I’ve Done :
Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs and Steel
Diamond came up on TED Talks this week, and he is a great example of Edge’s idea of the Third Culture – taking the sciences and humanities and putting them together to get to the roots of how the world works.
Jared Diamond specialises in how societies collapse and how cultures have become different, by not only focusing on the social and political but also the environmental and evolutionary. One of his books, Guns Germs and Steel, tells the story of how human history took different paths and is one of my top science-related reads.
National Geographic ran a 3-part series on the book, and here it is on GoogleVideo:
Here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
In this talk, the comb-over king discusses how societies collapse:
Jared Diamond’s Edge profile
American Scientist interview
Amazon search results for his books.
Walking the Amazon
This is some project.
Earlier this year, Ed Stafford and Luke Collyer from the UK started an epic journey – to walk the full length of the Amazon from the source in Peru to the mouth in Brazil. This has never been done before and will cover 4,000 miles and take about 18 months. Their aim is to raise money and awareness for a load of charities, as well as serving as a spotlight on issues related to environmental and social change in the Amazon region.
Recently, Luke left the expedition after 90 days – so if you’re up to it, head on over to the website and apply for the position of Ed’s new partner!
The team are posting regular videos of their progress to the website, which can also be found on GoogleVideo:
edited to correct Luke Collyer’s name.
Saving Videos
Firefox Users:
Just get one of the FlashVideo add-ons for your browser. I use Fast Video Download 1.3.1.4 and it’s great for YouTube and GoogleVideo.
Everyone else:
Simple steps to saving videos to use on a SMART board.
1. Download an .flv player programme. This one does the trick:
http://www.download.com/FLV-Player/3000-2139_4-10467081.html
2. For some videos on this blog, you can click on the ‘Download Video’ option beneath the screen. It will save the video to your hard drive as a .flv file. Your brand-new .flv player will play this, as will a SMART Board with updated drivers.
3. For other videos (directly taken from YouTube or GoogleVideo), you will need to go round the houses a bit:
a. Find the video and copy the full URL
b. Open KeepV.com in a new window
c. Paste the video URL into the input box and press ‘Download Video’
d. You will end up with a file called ‘get_video’ saved on your hard disk. To make it work, rename the file as ‘videoname.flv’
e. It should now work on your computer.
Flashcatcher is another product that can be used to save Flash files. It is a bit fickle, but for some Flash animations you just hover the cursor over the top-left corner and it will give you an option to save.
Remember – many video resources are copyright, and keeping them may be counted as breach of this copyright. However, in many schools internet access is so slow or restricted, the only chance you may have to show a class a decent video is to save it this way. Just be wise about spreading these copied files around.
i-Biology 