Tech Tool: SafeShare.TV

Imagine the scene: you've found this excellent video on YouTube that is perfect for illustrating a concept for your students. You decide to show it in class...and it's a great lesson! Except...one of your students points out the slightly inappropriate (or wildly inappropriate!) video being suggested on the sidebar next to the main video window.

Ugh. How embarrassing!

Wouldn't it be great if you could turn off those recommended videos? Or even the recommended videos that pop up after your video plays? Or remove those annoying ads? Or select just the clip you would like to use from a longer video?

Check out SafeShare.TV, an online tool designed to do all of these things, for free!

Here's how it works:

1. Find a video you'd like to share with your students. (For the purpose of this example, I will use a video I created using PowToon to teach my students about the Theory of Diffusion of Innovations.)

Notice all the suggested videos on the right-side of the main viewing window.
These ones aren't so bad--just distracting. Sometimes you get nasty stuff!

Here's the end of the video. Notice that there are a bunch of suggested
videos that now show in the viewing window. It'd be nice to not see them...

2. Copy the link to the the video you would like to use.

3. Open safeshare.tv in another tab of your browser.

Here's what the SafeShare.TV page looks like...

4. Paste the link you copied in to the "Paste a YouTube link" field.

The link is pasted!

5. Click the "Generate Safe Link" button. A safe link will be generated. :-) It should look something like this:

Notice that there is a tiny preview of the video and the title of the video as it
appeared on YouTube remains the same.

6. Click the "Take me to the safe view >>" link, and your video should load in a new tab of your browser, with all the other info (suggested videos, ads, etc.) stripped out of it. (Nifty, right?)

That's our video!

Here's what it looks like when you get to the end of the video. No suggested
videos pop up; SafeShare just pops up a still image from the video.

And that's it! You can copy and paste that link anywhere you'd like it. (Onto a website where you have a list of links? An email to your students or their families? Bookmark it for future use? Save it to a PearlTrees collection?) Such a helpful tool, right? Easy to use, safe for students, and--best of all--it's FREE!

But wait! There's more!

If you scroll down in the window where you generated the safe link, you'll notice a "Customize video" link under the preview.

Do you see the link? Just below the "Take me to the safe view >>" link...

There are some goodies here that are worth exploring. If you click the Customize video link, you get some new options, including:

• Changing the title of the video (Name it whatever you like!)
• Changing the background (If charcoal gray doesn't suit you...)
• Disabling sharing of this video (I'm not sure why you would want to do this, but maybe...?)
• Editing the play length (Which means you can use just a clip of a longer video. Spiffy!)

Options, options...

Just a quick bit of info about changing the play length, because that was a little geeky (but not difficult.) Here's how to do it:

1. Click the "Full" link to open the editing window.

When you click the "Full" link, this window should pop up.

2. Play the video in the small preview window to get the point where you'd like to start your clip and then hit the pause button to set the starting point. (Or you can just drag the bar to get select the starting point.)

Notice that there is now a number behind "Play clip from" instead of the word
"beginning," which had been there before. This number is the number of seconds
in to the video that your clip will begin.

3. You can set an ending point for your clip in the same way. Just pause the video where you'd like it to end (or drag the bar to select the ending point.) When you have the beginning and ending points set, click the "OK" button, and you're all set!

When you click the "OK" button, you'll come back to this view, but notice now
how the play length is now noted.

That's it! A great, free tool that can help keep your kids safe and allow you to still use the great content freely available through YouTube.

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One final note to remember: many schools block YouTube. SafeShare may be a work-around for you to still use YouTube content without needing to access the YouTube site directly. If you are unable to access safeshare.tv, you might need to talk to your Technology Director (or whomever it is that manages your school's web filter) to allow access to SafeShare. Once they see how it works, I'm sure they'll agree to help you out!