Boxee is probably the best application that is able to convert your computer into a hybrid cable TV media player device.  Recently Boxee has released a new beta version with a much better user interface.  Although Boxee is designed for home entertainment it also contains thousands of video feeds to educational resources.  With the easy to use interface this program works nicely on projector/touch screen setups and could easily be used in a classroom setting.

You can download Boxee from here.  You will need to sign up for a free account.   http://www.boxee.tv/

You can watch a short Podcast on using Boxee (very quickly) on a Mac below:

Thanks to a comment below from Jeorg – I am updating this post with their suggestion of simply visiting http://www.youtube-mp3.org/ . One step – works well Thanks for the tip.

Read Below for a longer more complicated method

Recently a teacher brought to me a You-tube video and wanted to extract just the audio track.   This is pretty easy to do using keepvid.com (or video download helper plugin for firefox) and Apple’s Garageband.

Here is a 10 Step Tutorial below or you can Watch my quick Podcast on the process:

1.  Find the Youtube Video

2.  Copy the URL for the youtube video that you want the audio for.

3.  Go to http://www.keepvid.com

4.  Paste the YouTube Url into the URL spot on the keepvid’s webpage.  Looks like this below.

5.  Look at the the download links and if possible select the MP4 version.

6.  With the file saved on somewhere (Desktop is a good spot)  – now open Garageband.

7.  Create a new Garageband Vocal project and then drag the video MP4 file into Garaband.  It will create a new track that looks like this.

8.  Now simply highlight the audio track in Garageband and then select EDIT | COPY.

9  Click on FILE | NEW PROJECT and again select VOCALS. (Don’t need to save old project)

10.  On the New Project click EDIT | PASTE.  You will see only the audio appears.  Now turn off any effects over on the right hand side then click on SHARE | EXPORT song and you are done -

I recommend Exporting the song as a MP3 for the greatest compatibility among other programs and players.

Change to MP3 where it says Compress using

Here is a cool plug-in I came across that makes embedding an external web page into a WordPress post or page simple. The Plugin is called Iframe Embedder and can be downloaded through WordPress admin console or from here.  This plugin works with the latest version of wordpress 2.9.2 and is pretty easy to use.

Below I have a link to an external site.  Below this link using the Iframe Embedder plugin I have embedded this page -audio, flash and all into this post.

http://s8s3eks.edu.glogster.com/glogburnin-up/

To embed this content into the A Blog post you must activate the Iframe Embedder plugin and then in the post use the following syntax: You can adjust the numbers at the end to fit your specific blog theme.

Here is the syntax above working below but using our district website.  Notice that you can use the links on the page and it contains the website inside the frame.

*NOTE  Firefox 3.6 is still a little buggy – using Iframe works with Firefox 3.7 Alpha, Firefox 3.5.x, IE Explorer 6,7,8 and Safari.  Also works with the Beta Release of 3.6.1 which means this is just a temporary issue with Firefox

It is important to not get too carried away with embedding external webpages as this is not really a best practice in most cases.  But still this is a nice simplified way to add an external site when appropriate directly to you web site.

Here is a quick Podcast on Installing the Iframe Embedder and using it in a post.

Podcast Iframe Embedder and WordPress

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Here in the district we host our own webserver, an mysql database running websites.  Many of the sites I use WordPress as a basic template since only a few staff members are interested in coding a site from scratch .  In 3 short years of using this code I am impressed with the size and diversity of plugins, add-on’s, themes, etc most of which are available free.  Here is a free plugin that I came across awhile back that work great, does not require any membership or outside service, and work with the latest version of wordpress 2.9.1.

This plugin is easy to use, efficient and effective.

Plugin is called  Quizzin (http://www.bin-co.com/tools/wordpress/plugins/quizzin/).

Quizzin can be added directly to your wordpress installation by clicking on Plugins, search for Quizzin and then click Add New, then search for Quizzin, and click Install and Activate.

From the admin Console you can now easily create and insert a quiz directly into your website – free, fully functional and fully contained within the code of the website.

To use this plugin simply login to the admin portion of your wordpress site and then click on Tools – look for Create or Manage Quiz.

Now click on Create New Quiz to get started.

Once you have a Quiz Created you can Now click on Manage Questions to start creating the quiz.  Easy and functional.  Using the editor you can easily create and add questions.

Here is a short 3 question quiz using the plugin.

With the Quiz ready I simply add the code ["QUIZZIN 1"] without the quotes and the quiz is automatically inserted into the post or page.

If you like this pluggin you may also like another plugin by this same author called Surveys – very similar to Quizzin.

Surveys can be found here http://www.bin-co.com/tools/wordpress/plugins/surveys/ .