Monday, October 8, 2012

Oh, No! I Can't Use Zamzar!

I could almost feel the earth shake this summer from the stamping of teachers’ feet all across the country when Google no longer allowed Zamzar.com to enable the downloading of YouTube videos. Zamzar has been a staple in many teachers’ bags of tricks for some time, particularly in districts where YouTube is blocked. What would they do now?

It is my understanding that Google was concerned about the indiscriminate downloading of videos without the owners’ permission and general non-compliance with the standard YouTube user agreement. Zamzar was by far the easiest of all the online tools that could be used for grabbing video for lessons. Since teachers and students should make every effort to download  only those videos they have asked for and received permission to use or those they can apply the Fair Use Guidelines to, I’ve included the links to additional information below.

That said, I would like to suggest Real Player as one of the easiest and fastest ways to download videos – almost any video from any source on the internet. Once you have installed RealPlayer on your computer and enabled its add-ins/plug-ins for your particular browser, all you need to do is hover over the top right hand corner of the video to access the “Download This Video” button. When the video has been downloaded to your computer, you can convert it to WMV or the RealPlayer extension with the free version and even use the Real Player Trimmer to cut out the specific sections of the video that you want to use. It has become one of my favorite programs. For more information:


Copyright and Fair Use Information for Teachers and Students


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