Streaming Video

[Lori Holcomb]

After reviewing the examples of streaming video, share your thoughts and opinions here. How does streaming video tie in with the goals and missions of the 21st century?

[Scott Jewitt]

I think that streaming video will allow students to bridge any real or perceived gap between their education and their lives. Watching "live TV" if you will, in the classroom connects students with their surroundings and hopefully instills a greater feeling of being informed and educated about current events. While perhaps controversial, I think that all students should have had the opportunity to see President Obama's "Back to School" speech delivered to students world-wide at the beginning of this school year. Whether you (or your parents) are democrats or republicans the speech was directed towards and affected everyone.
Streaming video also meets and enhances the needs of Distance Education. Professors' lectures can be streamed by students from home at any time of day. Additionally, there is a lot of educational information available from websites maintained by NASA, the History channel, PBS, and National Geographic. I think that showing video clips from these websites can enhance learning (especially for those students who are strong audio/visual learners). I think students may take more interest in an exciting video than an out of date text that they have to put for the effort to read. This medium may also afford students time to practice taking and making notes. Teachers can use short films to help students make outlines and notes.

[Jenny Buelin]

http://www.ripbs.org/Education/VideoStreaming/vs.mov

This is a nice, quick introduction to streaming video. I wish that my media specialists had shown this the first time they presented on what was available at our school. I eventually figured it out, and used United Streaming a LOT in my theatre arts & technical theatre classes. Block scheduling is nice because it doesn’t take a week to show a movie, but I can still make more minutes count when I show carefully (and very quickly) selected clips instead. This is so beneficial for giving examples of, for example, what a monologue is—I can explain it all day, but it is so helpful to have kids actually see one being done by a pro. (I can't exactly get myself fully into character and perform one for them as I simultaneously monitor to see if anyone leaves the room or is texting!) The down side can be that some kids see a video come on and immediately shut down, like I’m just killing time (all 2 minutes).

http://www.apple.com/education/it/videostreaming.html

This link didn’t work for me, so I just looked around the Apple Education resources for a little while and watched some of the tutorial videos. I fell in love with my MacBook Pro all over again. Online tutorials are so fantastic for giving kids (or everyone) the opportunity to pause, try it for themselves, and watch again if needed. The Shephard article emphasizes the importance of using streaming video as a supplement to other types of instruction. It’s unlikely to be effective as a stand-alone method. I’ve done this with lots of software. I’ll try things through trial and error, and then download or otherwise access online videos for additional help.



http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

The scripted “interviews” are a little cheesy, but this is a great resource. The video quality is a little unsteady compared with a DVD, but not to a distracting degree. The Shephard article makes a point to warn streaming video users that pauses and interruptions are to be expected as inherent to this tool.



Just to wrap this up, I’ll mention a project I have in progress for another course and, eventually, which will likely be a part of my dissertation research. I’m designing an instructional unit on clay safety, which will hopefully help teachers to minimize the clay particulate created in their classrooms. Over time it can take quite a toll on one’s lungs. I have set up Powerpoint presentations and online quizzes on my class website for my students to use. I think adding a video component would be extremely beneficial because I am explaining several processes that I need for students to understand before they can get their hands into clay.