#20: Hollywood, Bollywood, and Old Broadway

Not.

Actually, this Thing is about video, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll see your name in lights (except if you’re playing around with Flickr stuff), or strut down the red carpet for the Academy Awards in that gorgeous gown, or earn beaucoup bucks as the latest STAR. Don’t draft your acceptance speech just yet. Yup. We know you could’ve been a contender, but that’s not the point of this Thing!

The bad news is that PRINT has serious competition these days, and the really bad news is that the competition is winning. Just take a look at CNN.com. I have to really search for the news in text; the page is just riddled with those little camera icons, and much to my dismay, occasionally I see video as the default with a little link that says TEXT, as if it were some poor relation, somewhat shabby and out of date. Sniff, sniff.

So much for the bad news. The good news is that every day incredibly clever people are creating captivating video and uploading it to the web to share with us for free. And the REALLY great news is that many of these incredibly clever people are our students! Nudged on by good teachers, these students might be inspired to explain or demonstrate complex ideas in innovative ways that help other folks learn. If not, a lot of the video is just plain fun.

The point of this Thing is to find these videos, not create them (although your garden-variety cell phone or digital camera can do video these days). Techcrunch says there are two options for finding videos: raw or refined.

The granddaddy of all video-sharing sites is YouTube, but it's difficult to separate the wheat from the [umm] chaff. Luckily, YouTube enlists its users in ranking and rating the user-submitted videos. I found a minute about a yellow lab puppy uploaded by edpryan last October 26th on the first page of the Featured Videos. It has 4 1/2 stars and has been viewed more than 11,000 times. It's cute, but my Jack is just as cute -- just a bit bigger now :-)

If you're looking for user-developed "instructional videos," check out TeacherTube. I found this one-minute project from a Google Teacher Academy and "Technology Fear Factor in Education" by CoolCatTeacher Vicki Davis. Clever. [Just a few hints: The URLs for these videos are ginormous, but the links are available as a TinyURL built right into the page. Use that, especially if you want to email a link to a friend. Note that you can also embed a video player in your blog posts or in a web page.]

Then there are video search engines or video aggregators like blinkx, Google Video, AltaVista Video and Yahoo! Video. Note that many of these sites have "channels" or Advanced Search capabilities that allow you to restrict your searches to a particular kind of video, a specific source, or a topic. And HOT OFF THE PRESS -- on Wednesday, WeShow appeared, billing itself as a search tool to find "the best videos everywhere." Modest, aren't they? Or subscribe to Open Culture which keeps tabs on multimedia available free on the web that has (in their view) educational and cultural value.

Discovery Activity:

Explore a couple of video sites by looking at the Most Popular or Most Discussed videos. Or check out the Most Recent. Who knows what you'll find:

1. Using one of the video search engines or video aggregators, look for clips on both serious and not-so-serious topics. Don't forget to play as you explore!
   
2. Some sites allow you to subscribe to feeds for new videos or specific topics. Look around the pages for the familiar RSS icon or the word "Subscription."


3. Blog about what you find. Remember that you can embed a video player in your Blog post either by using the Edit HTML button or by using Blogger in Draft.

Isn't this fun? So much to discover, so little time!