A Day Without Chemistry: Pirate Ninja Style!

---A Video from the American Chemical Society
Our MHTV top story today made me have to get a little shady -access my inner Pirate and bring out my secret Ninja side- all for a good cause and all with administrator permission, of course!  

Here at Murray Hill Middle School we LOVE Science! So it did not come as any surprise that our interest was piqued today when we found this great story on Student News dot net - a press release about a hot new animated video celebrating International Year of Chemistry - and it took a bit of finagling to get it (if you're interested I'll give the lowdown after the story jump) - but do know dear students & readers we are determined to go that extra distance for Science!

"Imagine a day without cars, electric lights, TV, telephones, safe food, water, medicine, clothing, your house, and other things that make up modern life. Do it, and you are imagining a day without chemistry.

Aren't you glad you live in a world with chemistry? February 1st is the kickoff of the 2011 International Year of Chemistry, so take some time this year to appreciate the importance of chemistry in your everyday life!" - by Adam Dylewski

Produced by the ACS Office of Public Affairs, Digital Services Unit
and the Younger Chemists Committee

Video Credit:
Concept and Direction by Adam Dylewski and Mick Hurrey, Ph.D.
Art Direction and Animation by Kirk Zamieroski
Sound Design by Adam Dylewski

Ms. Jones as a Pirate AND a Ninja for Science!
What it took to get to show this video to my kids and how I became more pirate than ninja today - for a good cause--- SCIENCE!

Like I said at EduCon (which was - AWEsome - more later!) Sometimes you have to be shady for a good cause!

You can't think OUT of the box if you're boxed in by filters & firewalls!

I went to the website American Chemistry Society webpage and got faced with the dreaded Locked NET Monster filter warning because the ACS decided to load their new video only on the YouTubes. DOH! So....give up? NEVER!

• I called my amazing principal Mr. Dickey and got his permission and then used my Verizon Android Fascinate phone's 3G hotspot & bypassed our firewall to access YouTube to get the American Chemistry Society video! BAM!
• Copy & pasted the URL to the video & opened keepvid.com to download BloopBloop!
• Downloaded it as a medium quality .MP4 Zing!
• Uploaded the video to my Flickr account - making sure to leave a comment on the ACS's YouTube account saying so & giving full attribution (of course!) Pow!

NOW teachers or schools wanting to show this cool video celebrating the International Year of Chemistry can do so (see embed code on my flickr under SHARE) --- never minding being blocked by the fliters - the message is the thing!

Comment I left for them on the YouTubes vid:

LOVE this! .....BUT....96.8% of schools have YouTube blocked...so, I couldn't show it to my kids to day on our live MHTV show without being a bit of a pirate (with admin permission). I used Keepvid dot com to download it - show my kids then upload it to Flickr to get the embed code for our MHMS Daring School Media blog...hope you don't mind!
~Gwyneth
the daring librarian
ps, i totally made up that 96.8% statistic...but like it's a LOT!

How to Be a Ninja!

How to use KeepVid Comic Tutorial to snag educational videos for the good of learning & instruction! (click comic for different size options - Creative Commons - FREE to download, use, share!)

Do NOT use this tactic to download the latest Justin Bieber video - that would be just.like.wrong.


PS. Reason 21.5 why I'm the DARING Librarian! Ka-Pow!


A Day Without Chemistry: Pirate Ninja Style!
Tags, Adam Dylewski, American Chemistry Society, chemistry, flickr, keepvid, science, youtube