If you think watching the principal kiss a pig to motivate kids to read sounds fun, get a load of TeacherTube. It's designed to resemble YouTube, and it's not blocked off the school sites like YouTube often is. Some of these are at least as funny as Nora, the piano-playing cat.

Here is a blog item from Teacher magazine that tells all about it and ... well ... Mrs. Burk, the rapping math teacher, sings about how to change a mixed number to a simplified fraction.. Um, OK> The video called the "walkthroughs" is pretty hilarious, too. I'd like to see some of our great Valley teachers getting their videos posted up there. How about it?

TeacherTube Techno-educator Dan McDowell of A History Teacher reports on the recent launch of TeacherTube--a YouTube look-alike that's devoted exclusively to educational videos. Teachers can use the site to upload professional development videos and projects created in their classes, as well as to view, download, and comment on other educators' videos. The expectation is that noneducational and inappropriate videos will be "flagged" by users and removed from the site.

For McDowell, the great advantage of TeacherTube is that, unlike YouTube, it's not blocked by his school. But he notes that its success will depend on whether it can attract a critical mass of users. "Teachers definitely need to try it out. Create, upload. The only way to really increase the value of this resource is for all of us to contribute to it."

In any case, there's some wonderfully creative stuff already up on the site. This one, for example, has the makings of an instant classic: http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=7f89ddbebc2ac9128303&page=1&viewtype=&category=mv