Explore and Download Thousands of National Parks Pictures and Videos

On my way home from the Oregon SHAPE conference I drove through Mt. Hood National Forest. If you ever get the chance to do the same, take it! On my drive I stopped at the Timberline Lodge to snap a few photographs and ponder coming back to ski Mt. Hood. Back at my hotel my research into backcountry permits reminded me that the U.S. National Park Service hosts thousands of videos and pictures about the various parks and forests under its care.

The majority of the pictures and videos in the National Park Service's gallery are in the public domain. You can search the collection according to media type, location, or keyword. The licensing and re-use information for each picture and video is clearly listed. In general, the videos that are in the public domain have a download link and the ones that aren't in the public domain don't have a download link. The same is true for the pictures in the gallery.

Looking down the valley from Timberline Lodge, Mt. Hood National Forest.

Applications for Education
The National Park Service's multimedia gallery can be a fantastic resource for students who are making slideshows, videos, or virtual tours based on their research about a National Park or National Forest.

How to Create Vocabulary Games on Educandy

Educandy is a new service for creating simple vocabulary games and multiple choice trivia games. A convenient aspect of the service is that once you've created a list of vocabulary words it will automatically be applied to multiple game formats for you. In other words, write one word list and you'll get three games that your students can play. Your students can play the games without needing to create an account on the Educandy site. In the following video I provide an overview of how you can create games on Educandy and how your students can access your games.

How to Share Videos Through OneDrive

A few days ago I shared directions for sharing videos through Google Drive. Microsoft's OneDrive has a similar capability that in some ways is actually better than using Google Drive. In OneDrive you can share videos via unique URLs that you can password protect. Additionally, in OneDrive you can set an expiration date on the URLs that you use to share videos with others. In the following video I demonstrate how to share videos through OneDrive.


Applications for Education
Sharing videos through OneDrive can be a good alternative to using YouTube to share videos with students and their parents.

Canadian vs. American Thanksgiving

Monday is Thanksgiving in Canada. If you're curious about the differences and similarities between American and Canadian Thanksgiving, watch the following videos. Both of the following humorous videos that explain the differences between Thanksgiving in Canada and Thanksgiving in the United States.



Just a reminder, you should always preview videos before showing them in your classroom. I know many high school teachers who will not have a problem sharing these, but teachers of younger students may want to proceed with caution.