Teaching Channel - Pinterest for Teachers, But Better

Back in the day (say the late 1980s), there were filmstrips and old reel-to-reel films, but teaching videos? Not so much. Flash forward to the early 2000s, and my librarian best friends had amassed hundreds of VHS tapes and indexed them for our faculty. We were rich!

Now here we are in 2012, with YouTube, TeacherTube, and Gaggle, oh, my! Gaggle even has a "my videos" button, but sadly, not every school system has a Gaggle subscription for its teachers. 

Enter Teaching Channel, which features videos of lesson ideas in addition to exemplary lessons and strategies:

• "Teaching Channel is a video showcase -- on the Internet and TV -- of innovative and effective teaching practices in America's schools."
• "Videos labeled 'Lesson Idea Common Core' are Common Core aligned."
•  It's my favorite price - free!

All good, right? Well, I saved THE (absolute) BEST for last. Once you register for your free Tch account, click on the Workspace tab, and choose Lesson Planner from the My Workspace menu, you can

The Button enables you to "pin" not only videos and ideas from the Teaching Channel website, but also those you find anywhere on the web! I just pinned this great 2-minute video from Tch :
https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/classroom-silent-communication-signals?fd=1 
AND
this one from YouTube, an animation of one of my favorite children's books, Swimmy by Leo Lionni: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=442ie2qFANQ

Simply amazing!!!