Most teachers I know are hoarders. I don't say this in any derogatory tone. Teachers keep stuff. We keep lesson plans, materials, books anything we might someday use. I am no exception. I have a lesson plan on legal size paper written by a Science Teacher in Canada all about Edible bugs! I keep it because I
might teach that lesson some time.
Well, another thing I hoarded was videos. Not the cool viral videos we get in emails but the actual honest to goodness VHS tapes. Long after my last VCR gave up the ghost at home. After I had put my last video-tape at home out to pasture. I still used VHS tapes in my classroom. I had videos that aren't available on DVD. What to do with these old videos? Many of them become outdated and it can become time to upgrade to newer materials, but what about that video that simply has the best explanation you have ever found about_______.
The solution: USB video capture. There are several different products on the market for capturing video. There are DVD burning softwares (more to come in another post) that allow you to use the DVD playing capacity of your computer to capture video. But what about VHS tapes? A USB video capture device plugs into your computer's USB port and has standard yellow, red, and white RCA cable connections and usually an S-Video connection. This allows you to connect any device with RCA output to your computer: A DVD player, a VCR, even your old camcorder. With this connection and free software already on your computer you can capture portions of the video to use in your class. On a MAC you will need to use iMovie to help capture your video. Witha Windows computer you can use Windows Movie Maker. Doing this requires that you still comply with Copyright requirements including Fair Use and the Teach Act 2002. You can
check here for more info on copyright.
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