Using videos in the classroom

I am really in favour of using videos in the classroom to make teaching more meaningful and effective. I used the following video in my reading class as the prereading activity .
the title is Earthquake Destruction and link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y-62Ti5_6s.

I showed this video to my students without showing the title and asked them to write the words realetd to the video they just watched. And then I wrorte the words suggested by the students on the blackboard. And then I asked them to figure out what was the video about. After we came on the word Earthquake, I asked them to discuss in the groups few things they knew about the earthquake and few things they wanted to learn about the Earthquake. After this prereading session, we continued with the during reading lesson.

I found it very useful idea to use videos as prereading, writing and speaking activities.

Following the Tweets

I have been following two microblogs this week. They were Simple English and TEFL.Net.
I didnot find the Simple English very relevant to what I thought it would be but TEFL.Net is really interesting for ESL teachers. This blog provides the links to articles written on the topics like" "Learing How to avoide vocabulary queries", " 15 ways of starting a preschool lesson " etc.
I have read these articles and I have found them very informative and I hope that I will keep on receiving useful information related to my field.