Super High-Quality Cell Animations
Some great animations at this site: Virtual Cell Animations
Can’t find a way to save them, though – which is a bit of a pain when t’interweb’s not working properly.
Eaten Alive/ Monsters Inside Me: Parasites
This clip from Animal Planet has a couple of good examples of parasites in action*:
Animal Planet have some clips of their site: Monsters Inside Me (YouTube channel here)
And this one from the BBC’s Planet Earth shows the Cordyceps parasite take over an ant:
This clips from NewScientist shows the jewel wasp turning a cockroach into its slave/zombie/mobile dining centre – scary!
*Sadly, the best clips have been removed from GoogleVideo. You can buy the 3-part series from Discovery, for the bargain price of $449.85. I still don’t understand why some producers have to charge such a ridiculous fee for their programmes – surely that restricts their use in education? Hats off to all the documentary makers who post them up for free after a while (such as The 11th Hour and SuperSizeMe).
Eepybird: Diet Coke and Mentos Geysers
Diet Coke and Mentos geyser world record:
The original Eepybird Diet Coke and Mentos video:
Here is their website: Eepybird
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.
Dawkins: Enemies of Reason (part 2)
Part two of Dawkisquawks getting stuck in. Includes homeopathy and other ‘alternative’ medicine.
Dawkins: Enemies of Reason (part 1)
Riding a slightly-less-high horse than last year and all the ‘God Delusion’ shenanigans, Dawkins is still gunning for the feeble-minded. This two-parter’s well worth a watch, though part one is like shooting fish in a barrel (psychics, Glastonbury hippies, fath-healers).
i-Biology 