Guiding Students and Teachers to Streaming Media
Joyce Kasman Valenza
As school and public library bandwidth improves and as more and more of us move from dial-up to cable and DSL at home, we can happily access an ever-growing online library of streaming media resources. That is, if we can find them.
Streaming video is a newly critical area for media specialists to connect to curriculum, to bring to the attention of teachers and students. And it is a resource just screaming for a pathfinder.
Who streams?
Universities already use streaming video to broadcast classes and disseminate lectures, both live and archived for on-campus students as well as distance learners. Businesses regularly use streaming video to deliver training materials to employee desktops.
Who needs to stream?
Student multimedia productions are ubiquitous in our schools. My own students find themselves desperately in search of clips to support their projects: to explain the devastating effects of tsunami; to describe what happens during heart surgery; to bring to life a Hamlet soliloquy. Our high school teachers seek quick access to engaging media to bring breaking news, experts, and special events into their classrooms. It seems we’re always streaming.
What is streaming? Some vocabulary and background
The term webcast refers to any programming, generally audio or video, playing over the Internet. Streaming is the technology that enables the speedy delivery of large media files—such as audio and video--over the Web. This speed is possible because streaming media allows users to playback a broadcast without having to wait for a file to be completely downloaded; files play as they are downloading. Streamed video may be a live (synchronous) webcast as in the case of a right-now lecture or a real-time surgery, or it can be archived (asynchronous) media, accessed after the actual event.
Streaming can occur over a variety of downloadable browser-based players. Among the most popular are RealMedia player (http://www.real.com), Windows Media Player (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/default.aspx) and Apple’s QuickTime (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/). Users must download these browser plugins to be able to play files. They may already be resident on many desktops. Streamed media files may be saved on hard drives, servers, CDs, and DVDs, but because of their sizes, many users (schools and libraries) prefer to run them off the Web.
Where to stream?
Some archives of streaming media exist as database subscriptions. United Streaming http://www.unitedstreaming.com and AIMS Digital Curriculum http://www.digitalcurriculum.com/ are both popular services containing huge K12-appropriate huge archives. eLibrary http://elibrary.bigchalk.com/libweb/curriculum/do/search, a popular subscription database, offers streaming media as part of its searchable content. Unclick other media formats in the search screen and you have an audio/video search tool. streaMed Patient Education Solution, from wired.MD (http://www.medicalogic.com/partners/profiles/wiredMD_profile.html) offers a wide variety of videos, useful for the health classroom.
Free archives of streamed media are proliferating. The Research Channel (http://researchchannel.org/program/), a consortium of research universities and corporate research divisions, calls itself “the C-SPAN of scientific and medical research.” The site offers a schedule of live webcasts as well as a Video Library of more than 1000 full-length scholarly programs, with new releases added each week. New releases include discussion of the 9-11 Commission Report from the University of Virginia and Racial Preferencing in College Admissions from George Mason University.
The Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/) hosts a growing digital library of media libraries, including the Prelinger Archives, acquired in 2002 by the Library of Congress. The Prelinger collection includes nearly 2000 “ephemeral" films—from advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur). Also available is Open Mind, Rutgers Professor Heffner’s interviews with “some of the most creative thinkers of the last half-century.” Feature Films is a collection of classic public domain feature films and shorts. Mosaic Middle East News features selections from daily TV news programs produced by national broadcasters throughout the Middle East.
National Geographic’s WebCast archive (http://www.nationalgeographic.com/nglive/archives.html) offers concerts as well as shows exploring the history, photography, and adventure.
The American Memory Collection’s Motion Picture Collection (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/papr/mpixhome.html) offers Edison’s early films, Coca Cola Commercials dating back to 1951, films of the early Westinghouse factories, Presidential inaugurations, the earliest animated films, and films of turn-of-the-century work and leisure. Also from the Library of Congress is CyberLC (http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/) which features the lectures of noted authors, scholars, politicians, and historians.
History Channel’s Video Clip archive (http://www.historychannel.com/broadband/), covers such categories as Military and War, Historical Icons, Arts and Society, Science and Technology. Its Featured Clips include such dramatic film moments as Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald.
PBS NewsHour (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/video/ ) presents a rich archive of video produced since 2000 on the regions of the world, politics, the environment, health, the military, and much more. C-Span (http://www.c-span.org/homepage.asp) offers a wealth of video news resources—both live feeds and archives--from its homepage. It also offers a resource page for teachers (http://www.c-span.org/classroom/resources.asp) with its Clip of the Day and historic Clip of the Day archive, as well as access to its many fine series. C-Span’s Booknotes show ended after a fifteen-year run last December, but the shows will continue to be available online (http://www.booknotes.org/home/index.asp). Book TV (http://www.booktv.org/watch/) presents a five-year archive of biography, history, and more. Also useful in the classroom is American Presidents series archives (http://www.americanpresidents.org/).
Though controversial in schools for its commercial connections, Channel One (http://www.channelone.com/video/) also streams its news stories and features, hosted by teen anchors.
MSNBC offers Video On Demand (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4999736/) for breaking news and a significant archive (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5114929/) which includes much content on the war in Iraq. The Associated Press offers video current and archived news through Yahoo! News (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=index2&cid=968).
NOVA’s programs (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/programs.html) are conveniently segmented into chapters and include such classic shows as: MARS Dead or Alive, Cracking the Code of Life, The Elegant Universe, Dying to be Thin, and Life’s Greatest Miracle. The Archaeology Channel (http://www.archaeologychannel.org/) streams an assortment of “digable” films from the Acropolis to the Yucatan. The Annenberg/CPB Project (http://www.learner.org/resources/) offers an array of curricular programming covering math, art, geography, literature and science.
NASA’s Video Gallery (http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html) features shows hosted by both astronauts and rock stars. NASA TV (http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html) provides real-time coverage of activities and missions, as well as regularly scheduled educational programming.
Streaming media can bring language resources into French, German, Spanish, and all other classrooms where languages are being learned. Advanced students, especially AP, will benefit from hearing native language speakers in authentic situations. One impressive guide to world streaming video and radio broadcasts is maintained by Bates College Language Resource Center (http://abacus.bates.edu/lrc/llt.html#tv)
Yahoo! features a BETA of its new Video Search http://search.video.yahoo.com/ with thumbnails and immediate streams.
For a more comprehensive list of streaming video and webcast sites, and a “pathfinder starter” visit http://mciu.org/~spjvweb/video2.html
Adapted from Tag Team Tech Column, VOYA April 2005.