How to Quickly & Easily Save Youtube Videos, FREE!

Does your district restrict access to youtube or other video websites? Mine runs a filtering program that removes all the ads from the side and restricts access to certain videos. Unfortunately, even some perfectly appropriate videos fall victim to the filter! During testing in the spring, our access is often cut off for weeks at a time too. This is a big problem in my classroom as we really enjoy using youtube videos throughout our day!


We use YouTube videos for Brain Breaks:
This is our current favorite, so simple and yet the kids love how it speeds up each time!

We use them to reinforce certain skills:
I'm hoping to find a video that goes to 200, but so far no luck!

We use them to expand our knowledge:

The point I'm trying to make is, I NEED YouTube! So imagine how happy I was today to learn a simple, quick FREE way to download youtube videos to my computer so I can use them without internet access!I thought I would share this, via a quick tutorial, because I know other teachers must be looking for this too :)

The site I used was savefrom.net. Once you get to the site, here are the steps:

 Step 1: Paste in the url of the video you want to save (just find it on youtube first, copy the address and then go back to savefrom.net)

Step 2: Press "Download"

Step 3: Select your format. An MP4 will play in Windows Media Player while you can drop an FLV into a Smartboard file.

Step 5: Either save to your computer or open in Windows Media Player. 
 
 This is how it looks in a Mozilla Firefox browser.


This is how it looks in Internet Explorer.

Step 6: You can add it to a playlist in Windows Media Player (maybe a Brain Break playlist? A Calendar playlist?) or just save it to your videos file or to your desktop!
I am going to be downloading videos all weekend and putting them into powerpoint presentations for each part of my day! Now I don't have to worry about whether the internet will be up, whether we will have YouTube access or whether videos will suddenly be yanked off the site!


7 comments:

Kelly said...

I was so happy when they opened up you tube for our district. We had to go to a workshop before they would open it for our school and it seems like we had to sign some sort of agreement to the type of content we would show. I was using a site like the of you have demonstrated before and it was a life saver!
Kelly
I'm Not Your Grandpa, I'm Your Teacher

barbkibler said...

Thank you for sharing this. I used to be able to download them in another application that closed. I agree, I used them all the time and HATE the commercials and when I can't get on....

barbkibler said...

Thank you for sharing this. I used to be able to download them in another application that closed. I agree, I used them all the time and HATE the commercials and when I can't get on....

Erika said...

Love this! Sometimes our internet connection is so slow because of all the technology running. I'm hoping I can imbed these in a promethean flipchart. Thanks for sharing. Hope all is well. Haven't talked to you in ages.

Ziggyfriends said...

Thanks for the info! Both of the sources that I used to download from have quit working. I love to use the audio from these to put on my iPods for Daily 5 listen to reading. Video books are great, but I still love for my students to have the experience of a real book in their hands.

Anonymous said...

I was so excited when i saw this post on pinterest! I tried to pull up some of my videos on youtube but no url shows up? I know it used to show this. Any ideas? Im desperately trying to get things ready before the new school year.

Jennifer K. said...

@Christine Hi Christine! When you go to youtube and go to a video's page to start playing it, just copy the url that's in the address bar at the top of your screen. For example, when I go to youtube and type in "Learning Stations 5 Little Ducks" it shows me a bunch of choices. I double click on the first one and it brings me to the video page. In the address bar at the very top of the page it says:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XECtg0w_YKk
That's what you'll copy and use over on the savefrom.net page. Hope that helps!

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