Serendipity35

More shift happens. Viewers, especially younger ones, are turning more and more away from watching TV on a TV. Are big screens and high definition pictures going to hold viewers? Doubtful.

YouTube and Google and so many new players are capturing serious numbers of "viewers" online, and making available more and more serious educational content too.

In 2006, I was writing more about using and uploading personal video, and that's still important for teachers and students in a creative way. But using video as teachers have used DVDs, VHS, 16mm films and filmstrips in the past is also important.

Many people still look at online video as a place for "entertainment." That's definitely a big share of what's available. I'd argue that even some of that is useful in a classroom, especially when it has been trimmed down to clip size. You could probably use some segments from the newer service Hulu that's serving up lots of TV and movie content (with ads).

There's Julia Louis-Dreyfuss in a funny sketch from Saturday Night Live about an adult school class on using MySpace that could work as a way to entertainingly introduce a class to the topic of online safety.

When I wrote that earlier post in 2006 about video online, NBC was one of the companies that was upset about their content being uploaded as clips by viewers. That has all turned around. Today you can go to the NBC site and watch clips and full episodes of current shows like 30 Rock or Late Night With Conan O'Brien. It takes a bit longer to turn those big ships around even when they can see an iceberg ahead.

I don't think all the copyright issues are worked out to everyone's satisfaction. If I install a program like DownloadHelper into my Firefox browser, I can quickly download videos that I want to watch away from my computer. Legal? Fair use in my classroom?

I might want to use YouTube to show my class Barack Obama's speech on race. Of course, remember that Obama has his own YouTube channel.

PBS uses YouTube to run a promo for their Frontline special on "Growing Up Online", but you can show the full program at the PBS site or ask students to access it there from outside the classroom.

Professor Randy Pausch's "Last Lecture", which has also become a book, is available in several versions and with commentaries on a number of sites.

When sites allow you to embed video on your own blog or web page, or allow you to download video to play on an actual TV set using one of the growing number of devices made for that purpose, you know the nature of using video has changed.

Sites like Hulu are open up a huge vault of video that exists but isn't (and hasn't been) available. The commercial media companies are finally getting it because they are finding ways to profit. The educational media companies, like the educational book publishers, are going to be slower to discover how to adapt. It's the same with viewers at home (like you) who are changing their technologies, but schools will be slower to adapt/adopt technologies - as they have been for all the previous ones. How many classrooms still have/need VHS machines because tapes are all they have to use? Maybe it's because the school can't afford to buy new players (even though they are incredibly cheap now) or repurchase titles on DVDs. Maybe the publishers haven't made all titles even available on DVDs.

Blip.tv is an example of another trend in media online. They are aiming at bloggers (some of those are teachers & students) and others and throwing in the added feature of being able to possibly make some money from their service. As they explain it:

We've got a great service for great shows. A new class of entertainment is emerging that is being made by the people without the support of billion-dollar multinationals. Our mission is to support these people by taking care of all the problems a budding videoblogger, podcaster or Internet TV producer tends to run into. We'll take care of the servers, the software, the workflow, the advertising and the distribution. We leave you free to focus on creativity.

You deserve to make money from your hard work. That's why blip.tv works with as many video ad networks as possible to make you money. If you have a hit show we'll use our own sales force to sell a sponsorship. We share everything we make for you 50/50. And if you have your own sales force you can sell a sponsorship — and we'll traffic it for you in exchange for 10%.

Tons of people come to blip.tv to watch great original programming, but that's not the end of it. We've got a distribution network that reaches hundreds of millions: built-in syndication to AOL Video, Yahoo! Video, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, MSN Video, Google Video, Blinkx, iTunes and the Apple TV, Blogger, WordPress.com and much more.

What will I be able to say about online video in a year or two? Your guess is as wrong as mine.