This post was inspired by a request from a reader for a tool that can be used to mash-up YouTube clips. YouTube is full of great content that can be useful in the classroom (YouTube is also full of nonsense that causes schools to block it). Sometimes you only need to show a part of a video to illustrate a point. Other times it could be useful to string together a series of videos. The following tools can be used to cut, mix, and mash-up YouTube clips.
Disclaimer: Some of these tools might be interpreted as a violation of YouTube’s terms of service. I’m not a lawyer so I’ll let you interpret the T.O.S. for yourself and determine if you should use these tools in your school.
TubeChop gives you the ability to clip a section from any YouTube video and share it. This could be useful if there is a section of long YouTube video that you want to share with your students. One such instance could be if you want to show students studying public speaking a section of commencement address as a model.
Splicd is a service that lets users select and share a segment of a YouTube video. Splicd is a simple and easy service to use. To use Splicd all you have to do is select a video from YouTube, copy the video’s url into Splicd, then enter the start and end times of the video segment you wish to watch. This service will be particularly useful for those times that you want to share only a part of a long video. Click here to see Splicd in action.
If you made mix tapes in the 80’s, the concept of Drag On Tape will be familiar to you. Drag On Tape makes it easy to string together a series of YouTube videos and or sections of YouTube videos. Create your mix tape of videos just launch the Drag On Tape editor, enter a search term for videos, then drag videos on to the Drag On Tape timeline. You enter searches and drag videos as many times as you like. To trim video timings and string videos together just match them up on the timeline editor. Drag On Tape allows you to collaborate with others on a mix.
On a related note, if you have raw video footage that you want to edit or you have a collection of your own videos on YouTube that you want to edit, the YouTube video editor is quite easy to use. You can find the directions here.
Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
47 Alternatives to YouTube
Auto-captioning Available for YouTube Videos
Downloading Videos for Use in the Classroom
Free Guide – Making Videos on the Web
