The growth of online video fueled by video sharing websites like YouTube has created a great resource of millions of videos ready and waiting to be tapped into to support our teaching and our pupils learning. Obviously there is a lot of rubbish that needs to be waded through, but there are some gems as well.

Because of the possibility of misuse of these sort of sites and the unsuitable nature of some of the videos, most of these sites are blocked by school networks. That means that it is impossible to show a video streamed directly from the site in the classroom and another approach is needed.

As long as there are no copyright issues, videos can be downloaded from YouTube (and other video sharing sites) using one of a number of free websites. These websites will take the address of the video (that you get from the YouTube page) and will download the video and allow you to save it on your computer for playing back later.

Some of the sites download it in the format (type of video) that YouTube uses, which has the file extension .flv . If you get a file like this you will need a special video playing software such as VLC media player or Wimpy desktop FLV player, both of which are free. Other websites will convert the file for you into a format that can be played on windows media player (e.g. .avi, .mpg or .wmv).

Here is a list of some of the websites that you can use to save videos from YouTube and other sites:

Sites that will download as .flv files

Sites that will download and convert videos into nice formats

I haven’t tested all of these sites, but have listed several to help you find one you like.

**UPDATE**

I have found another web site called Youconvertit.com that allows you to convert and download videos as well as convert files of all kinds into other formats.

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