Should lecture capture be used to relieve classroom over crowding?

This is my newest column for the October-November issue of Streaming Media Magazine:
At the beginning of this school year, Echo360 Inc. CEO Fred Singer wrote an editorial for The Huffington Post extolling the virtues of lecture capture. He observed that the lean economy “won’t allow institutions to simply erect new buildings and hire qualified staff to meet rising needs” but that lecture capture can assist because it’s “like DVR’ing class with full playback functionality.” Singer went on to argue that “lecture capture addresses overcrowding by freeing seats,” permitting students who prefer to view an online lecture to skip class.

He also cited studies that pointed to higher student achievement and even better classroom attendance resulting from students reviewing video materials outside of the classroom.

Nevertheless, my interest was piqued by Singer’s argument that lecture capture can substitute for the in-class experience for a student who prefers watching online. It’s not something I often hear in the promotion of lecture capture. While companies list distance learning as a core use case, they take care not to imply that recordings of classes in on-the-ground curricula should substitute for attendance.

Justified or not, the relationship between attendance and lecture recording is a sensitive issue. When there’s resistance to adopting lecture capture, the risk of encouraging would-be slackers to cut class is a prime objection. Thus, I was surprised that Singer would be so blunt.
Read the rest at StreamingMedia.com

Video and the power of connection

This is my latest column for Streaming Media Magazine:

These days we all do it. We meet someone new in person or online and then we do a search of his or her name on Google, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Perhaps we want to stay in touch, or maybe we’re interested in learning more about what that person does. But I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only person who is a little disappointed when I don’t find a profile picture. We don’t just want to read about someone; we are naturally drawn to photographs and want to know what someone looks like. It helps us build a connection.

Obviously—at least to us video producers— video amplifies that connection by allowing us to see a person speak and act; it’s more like if we were in the same room together. This is the same reason why videoconferencing and video chatting have become popular technologies among both business users and consumers.

Read the rest at Streaming Media…

What I’ve Been Up To Elsewhere

It looks like my challenge for 2010 is to see how many simultaneous writing projects I can keep up. What I’m learning so far is that the projects involving other people seem to gain my attention better than my nine-year-old blog here. Also, I enrolled in distance education certificate program that is also soaking up quite a few hours a week.

However, if you’re interested here’s some of the things I’ve written recently elsewhere.

At Radio Survivor I’ve discussed two of my favorite commercial radio stations, WDHA and WXRT. Yes, despite my undying loyalty to college, community and public radio, there have been a few commercial stations that rise above and make it into my radios once in a while.

Of particular interest to the typical mediageek reader should be my report on the fifty-nine new noncommerical radio licenses the FCC recently issued. Interestingly, five of these licenses went to current low-power FM stations.

I’ve stepped up my output for Streaming Media Magazine and StreamingMedia.com, trying to cover more stories related to video in education. My new biweekly series is called Video.edu. The first first edition I covered UCLA pulling streaming videos after receiving a legal threat and changes to educational technology funding in Obama’s 2011 budget. In the second one I wrote about the library copyright alliance defending educational streaming of copyrighted video and a Yale admissions video that’s gone viral.

My two most recent magazine columns are a 2009 year-in-review of video in education and a rumination on where is the teaching video camera of today.

What Makes for Compelling Educational Video, and Predictions for 2009

I have two recent columns on educational media posted over at Streaming Media Magazine. The most recent one is the “Futurewatch” for education in 2009, which will be published in the upcoming Industry Sourcebook 2009 issue. I’m predicting a greater emphasis on mobile-accessible media along with greater convergence between communication platforms like videoconferencing with streaming and downloaded/pocasted media. I also have some hopes for a more open and interoperable future.

The other is my regular “Class Act” column from the Dec. 2008/Jan. 2009 issue, “What Makes for Compelling Video?” In it I take up some thoughts I had while picking up a video production project here at NU, and what I learned by trying to view the product as a regular websurfer. I think there should be something of interest for anyone producing video, educational or otherwise.

What Does BitTorrent Think of Comcast Now?

I’m in San Jose, CA for Streaming Media West, an online media conference, which begins tomorrow. I’m very interested in hearing tomorrow’s keynote by Ashwin Navin, President & Co-Founder of BitTorrent, who is talking about how a commercial P2P network can be used to distribute legal audio and video content.

I hope he’ll address the recent revelation about Comcast interfering with its customers BitTorrent traffic and how that might be affecting his company’s business model. I can’t imagine he can ignore the issue — otherwise it’ll be the 900 pound gorilla in the room (and I’ll ask the question myself).

My experience in the online media industry is that network neutrality is the issue nobody wants to talk about too much, both because regulation is rarely a popular issue, and because there is the real hope that it isn’t needed. Unfortunately, Comcast’s interference with BitTorrent traffic–regardless of whether the shared content is permitted to be shared or not–is the single most clear example of a non-neutral network in action. So I’m very curious what BitTorrent thinks about Net Neutrality now.

I’ll be sure to blog this keynote the best I can (delayed a few moments due to the fact there’s no wifi in the presentation rooms themselves).