Notes from Video, Education, and Open Content

Below are my notes from the Video, Education, and Open Content Conference in New York. I posted these on my MySpace blog, but I wanted easier access to the links, both for myself and my students. I will continue to update the links, as I've found at least a half dozen more. This is an exciting time in education and the world. We have unprecedented access to technology, and as we try to get a handle, we must attempt to broaden that access to all. Just think about people who cannot afford to go to school having access to course materials from MIT and Yale University. If today's primary mantra is freedom = the ability to consume, then access to cultural heritage worldwide and the ability to recreate can greatly enhance that freedom, taking us through terrain never before seen. Equalizing access should be a top concern in education, always balancing the creator's rights with those of the users. Once you visit some of these links, you'll understand why I'm so excited about these possibilities.

Video, Education and Open Content: Best Practices
Production, Distribution, Technology and the Law
May 22-23, 2007

Opening Remarks

Frank Moretti's information can be found at the above link, as his name kept eating everybody else's code. Don't ask me; I'm not a programmer.

Cathy Casserly,William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Program Officer in Education at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
The goal of the foundation is to equalize access to knowledge and improve teaching and learning. Today's students are on separate but parallel tracks: what they are doing in classrooms and what they are doing in their daily lives.

Peter B. Kaufman, Intelligent Television, CCNMTL, President and CEO of Intelligent Television and Associate Director of the Columbia University Center for New Media Teaching and Learning.
Atlas Media: new division of theatrical documentaries.
Open Culture
1. Demand for online video has exploded.
2. Opportunities to produce have exploded.
3. Access is undeniable. Moving images archives are being digitized.
4. Portability: access anywhere.
5. Laws and economics are changing.

Video and education – new worlds...Appreciating the new role of video in education
Peter Brantley, Digital Library Federation, Executive Director of the Digital Library Federation.
Challenges that video pose for digital libraries
Digital libraries act as repositories. Libraries have been about physical things, basically offline (not on network). They have been passive. Libraries purchased and licensed objects, and people go to the library to use these objects. But now people make own media; access is assured. Dramatic changes in library: cafe at Berkeley with students' engaging in collaborative work. Music and sound not things like books. How can library be active? Video is didactic: it allows for exchange.

Murray Weston, British Universities Film and Video Council, Director of the British Universities Film and Video Council.
The council promotes production, study and use of moving images and sound in U.K. universities through subscriptions. You must be a registered student. How are moving pictures used in education? He provided this list:
1. As instrument: illustration – visual aid;
2. For enrichment: affective domain;
3. For reference as primary or secondary record: use in historical research and scholarship/ for cultural reference;
4. As scientific device: as scientific record
5. As a creative medium: communicate, inform, etc.
Its status in scholarship is underdeveloped in many respects. Importance of context and provenance are of concern as well as access questions. Metadata is king (not always content). Ask questions like: what do most teachers/students want? We need funds to set up and maintain. There should be collaboration of owners, formal reviews, agreements, sharing licenses: ultimately we should seek international harmonization and clarification.

Paul Gerhardt, BBC Creative Archive, Executive Director of the BBC Creative Archive.
BBC conducted project for 18-months, and gained 100,000 registered users. Purposes included education, national history, etc., and content areas included fact and news areas. The archive was restrained with entertainment because a complex set of issues. BBC is heavily regulated (overregulated). It conducted a public value test, which lasted 6-9 months. It was an exhaustive study to discern the value to people and market impact. In a post-broadcast world funding compounds these challenges. The BBC is committed to making content and access more open, but doing this is a huge challenge. It created a digital curriculum, multimedia based on school curriculum. Due to a complaint filed by EU, the BBC pulled plug. The first phase includes share license, and it is still continuing to archive.

Keynote address...Remarks from a recovered archivist and filmmaker, Prelinger Archives and Internet Archive, Rick Prelinger, writer, archivist, filmmaker, is founder of the Prelinger Archives, co-founder of the Prelinger Library, and Board President of the Internet Archive
Best practices include the following:
1. Leverage of existing resources. buy out of rights bundled in educational media.
2. Segmentation
3. Openness: not one-shot deal but on a continuum. There is a broad spectrum of interactions in education, and open earth content should include not just access but production. People need the freedom to remix: to get their hands on object and play. We need to share, to network experience with others. Interoperability rests upon openness, and we should default to open to share materials as freely as the law allows.
4. Moratorium: to declare a moratorium on closure and complex copyright laws. Points of departure: bridging production, archive and education. Archives: gone retail, unprecedented response from new users. Sites like YouTube have raised public's expectations, and it's hard to see how institutions can meet them. Repurposing material is cheaper than making new material, especially with entertainment. When producing content, we should default to openness, not encumber form the start. We should work on exclusivity: distribution channels should allow for openness.

Production – university best practices...A review of several among many innovative university productions
John Frankfurt and Mark Phillipson, CCNMTL, Phillipson is Coordinator of Teaching, Learning, and Library Services at the Center for New Media Teaching and Learning at Columbia University. Frankfurt is Educational Technologist at the Center for New Media Teaching and Learning at Columbia University.
Havel – The Havel exhibit was unusual for center; it was events driven as opposed to content driven. It includes interviews that viewers can watch by chapters. The center negotiated with CNN to use raw footage, allowed to take hours of footage and cut to fit content of the site. The site includes different types of interviews: archives, production, and donated footage. Much of the content was gathered under open, but there are mixed resources from library. Falls into the Digital Bridges Initiative: Havel remains in website but some day will be in repository, share and harvested. It is a RSS website. It involves the recontextualization of video. Videos were collected, and users can add to their notebook. The chapter goes into notebook. You must register to use the site. (I've been trying to figure this site out for two days; I'll let you know how it comes out).

Diana E. E. Kleiner, Yale OER VLP, and Paul Lawrence, CMI2, Kleiner is Dunham Professor of History of Art and Classics at Yale University and Director of Yale's Open Educational Resources Video Lecture Project.
Yale's OER project was funded by the Hewlett Foundation, and will be available through Open CourseWares by Fall 2007. It involves:
1. Video to make available certain number of courses
2. Faculty recruitment that are willing to share intellectual property
3. IP/Collections
4. Full arts and sciences curriculum
5. Innovation
The project is a confluence of content and medium, and fits with Yale's objectives for globalization overall. Video is optimum vehicle for presentation. Initially it will involve seven courses but will expand in the future. The overall goal is a open classroom worldwide free. The project hopes to capture:
1. The person: video will feature professor and unique pedagological approach;
2. A place: video allows open live classroom and ability to share information;
3. The learning process itself: widespread audit, accessing information, and is about gradual intellectual revolution;
4. A creative remix: go beyond auditing, picking and choosing what to view; its
focus is on content. The project optimizes the element of choice, building curriculum. Courses might pose problems depending on securing rights to use.

Scott Shunk, Visualizing Cultures, MIT, Project Director of Visualizing Cultures at MIT.
The site provides a functional platform for the content through examination of historical record through images. John Dowers, professor at MIT, wanted a way to distribute the content as well as a way to wrap text around images to add value to content and his work. The project is digital image scholarship: content (cultural institution), scholars and knowledge to contextualize content in order to allow access to materials. The content now focuses on Japan. It provides content that is broken into units. The core exhibit is text that uses embedded images. These are presented in visual narratives: themes from text, illustrated like a graphic novel. When you provide no context, it becomes difficult to navigate the content. It is a means to add levels of context and have open, free and available; it is also meant to empower with added level of relevance. Moreover, users can create their own productions. It is a scholarly context around visual imagery that enables users to create own pathways into content.

Mike Cubit, MediaVision, Case Western, Director of MediaVision at Case Western Reserve University.
MediaVision allows web delivery of lecture content and other forms of content. The expectations of students are high, and his department uses students as leverage when comes to tackling adoption by faculty. Examples of MediaVision's content include Telesurgery, Wireless Mesh Project, Red (an orchestra), and Second Life. You can view these at Case.TV. There's a searchable archive with fully indexed and tagged and tagged content. While students mostly use video, they do not use audio often. Most students indicated they use video to clarify concepts.

Production – producer best practices...Exemplary educational productions from outside the academy
Margaret Drain, WGBH, Vice President of National Programming at WGBH.
We shall Remain
Car of the Future
Teachers Domain
Adoption
Above are examples of projects using technology for education. These programs include NOVA, American Perspectives, and others. Each program has digital platform. We Shall Remain provides a Native American perspective: WGBH gave cell phones to Native Americans. They are looking for five strong stories about the struggle to survive. They did this for two reasons: it is increasing participation, and they are attempting to bridge the digital divide. They partnered with museum in Arizona. They provided a Nokia camera phones worth about $750-800, and they trained in narrative storytelling. Car of the Future is a way to help today's drivers. The web is used for open production. They put production content online and encouraged feedback. This brings the audience into the process of production. NOVA is the site most used, and it is critical to reach people. Most is open content, but some is not. It is difficult to get carte blanche for mash up, etc. Teachers Domain involves segmenting archival material: 1,000 clips or resources. Some of the content can be downloaded and remix; it provides four levels of usage. The Adoption project is not funded. They should find out this coming week. Its production actually begins online, but then ends up on television. They will provide three families with cameras who will record each week as they go through the stages of adoption.

Thomas Lucas, Thomas Lucas Productions, director and producer and President of Thomas Lucas Productions.
Lucas is an independent producer. He primarily works with scientific data. He creates simulation alongside of theory and data collection. Others from different places can access data and collaborate.

Curtis Wong, Microsoft, Principal Researcher and Manager of the Microsoft Next Media Research Group.
Wong is working to create deeper understanding by providing layered stories, contexts, and information. The narrative provides the story; the context enables the users to explore their interests. One example he provided was the Codex Lester: DiVinci liked organic metaphors. So the graphic included a tree, with a number of other smaller graphics. Microsoft is not thinking about new media, but rather the next media as well as interactive television. Links to examples are below.
Commanding Heights
The Age of AIDS.

Distribution – platforms and technologies – best practices more...Distribution options and best practices for educational video
Obie Greenberg, Google/YouTube
Obadiah T. Greenberg, now at YouTube, helped to launch UC Berkeley's iTunes service.
What is YouTube doing in education? YouTube has reached a critical mass for audiences. To keep up with demand and provide services to students, UC-Berkeley launched its own site on Google Video on September 26, 2006. They include courses, events, sports, etc. YouTube is the host site. YouTube accounts offer branding opportunities. Branded channel includes a watch page. For example, NBA is treated as a user. Play list with sequence of videos is provided. Also, there are communities. with sub channels. Border is an image map.

Stacey Seltzer, Joost, Senior VP of Content Strategy, Acquisition and Operations for Joost.
Joost offers peer-to-peer interaction with television content. It is currently in beta form and only available to friends. It enables people to move information around the internet and file sharing. It is third generation technology that has been optimized and offered to public over the Internet. It deals primarily with closed content, offering a streaming experience. A series of platform widgets enable users to interact with content and share content. Metadata enables users to organize and provide more information about content. It is a channel driven system.

Donna Liu, University Channel/Princeton University, Founder and Executive Director of the University Channel Project at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
University Channel is an attempt to lower barriers of production and distribution. It is essentially a blog that offers a series of lectures. It distributes to television stations for rebroadcast, and its primary goal is to get the content out.

Ben Hubbard, University of California – Berkeley, Special Events & Video Services Manager at the University of California – Berkeley's Educational Technology Center.
UC-Berkeley distributes webcasts and podcasts of lecture materials and other content. They have partnerships with Google and Apple. Sakai Webcast Systems. Keep eyes on building frameworks.

Archiving – best practices more...Accessing educational video archives
Karen Colbron, WGBH, OpenVault, Manager, Media Library and Archives, Digital Access Management Initiative, WGBH.
Open Vault uses emerging technology to archive and provide a framework for access to rich media material. It brings content from New Television Workshop, Say Brother, and The Ten O'Clock News with grant funds in order to link across content to facilitate access. This website allows functionality; users can scroll over item and the title appears in top left. The site provides a description of the item as well as a notes feature. Users can send the URL to share information. The page also has a feature that is similar to Netflix, by showing items of similar interest. When browsing the archives, users can browse five levels deep. (Not all of the clips are available, though many of these clips are listed).

Jane Johnson, Library of Congress MIC Project, Library of Congress MIC Project Manager.
The MIC provides a tool for discovery. It is a database that provides a layer of functionality. The repository provides a platform for collaboration. AMIA collaborates with the Library of Congress and is funded in large part by the National Science Foundation. A major component to the MIC is a union catalogue, which brings together images from participating archives allowing users to search different archives nationwide. It pulls up moving images. It is an attempt to address what Johnson called a crisis in film preservation. They conducted a feasibility study to explore the integration of databases and discover access policies. They hope eventually to hold the rights to metadata and are currently exploring different metadata strategies.

Andrea Kalas, British Film Institute, Head of Preservation at the British Film Institute National Archive.
This archive enables the preservation and public access to moving images that played role in history and provides different voices. It is a co production with BBC. One example is the preservation of Mitchell and Kenyon films, portrait photography of the everyday lives of those in Britain. They have attempted to build information about the films to give the films context. The collection contains over 800 nonfiction titles 1900 to 1913. In addition the collection includes The Open Road, a collection of travelogues by Claude Friese Greene, a pioneer filmmaker exploring the uses of the color process.

Archiving and production – best practices...New approaches to bringing production and archival sensibilities more closely together
Jeff Ubois, Intelligent Television, Director of Archiving and Access Solutions at Intelligent Television.
There is a need to explore collaborative approaches to archiving. This is especially true as television gains a memory. NetTV is not television. Online communications and archives should be built around production, collaboration and cataloguing. Different organizations, such as Democracy Now!, have begun to tap volunteers on Internet to lower costs. There is a need to explore public-private partnerships.
ParkRidge47
Torture Taxi

Nan Rubin, Thirteen/WNET, Project Director, Preserving Digital Public Television, at Thirteen/WNET. and Kevin Devine, Thirteen/WNET, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Thirteen/WNET.
There is a need to preserve digital public television. The station is currently using its existing system to preserve. Through the American Archive, some materials can be made available, especially for use in educational settings.

Video and open content...The expanding role of video in the open content movement
John Dehlin, Open CourseWare Consortium, Director of the OpenCourseWare Consortium based at MIT.
Openness requires a major mind shift. The consortium is attempting to managing growth and maintaining quality. Currently the consortium deals primarily with course materials. Some of the courses have lecture video. Attempting to find ways to preserve course materials. They are struggling with how to make more affordable and richer at the same time. Some universities have take down policies, in case complaints about fair use arise. They are currently collaborating with Itunes Europe. They are attempting to find the funds to build learning communities, and want to create a vertical rather than simply horizontal functionality.

Video, education, and the law – best practices...Rights and other legal considerations for producers, distributors, and consumers
Eric Saltzman, Creative Commons, lawyer and filmmaker, is a member of the Board of Directors of Creative Commons.
From the moment a work is created, it is copyrighted. There's nothing about letting people know the work is copyrighted. For owners who want tell people up front want people to use work, creative content licenses are available on website. They are meant to compliment to copyright. Many licenses require attribution. Some content is more complicated, when users take material from other sources and use. FATHOM. MIT courseware content use licenses that permit derivative work. Science commons are funded by the Hewlett Foundation. Learning Commons attempt to coordinate world of open educational resources.

Josh Nathan, Thirteen/WNET, General Counsel at Thirteen/WNET.
The station has a strong partnership with educators. Rights of copyright owners are negotiated through manner, territory and term. Also they deal with exclusivity. It's all about money. Many want to give up few rights for the amount of money they can get. However, technology is changing the viewership. New economic models are developing, especially with how content is distributed. Rather than video being for sale or rental, it's now specified as home use. How do rights holders get their money? Nathan also foresees that the idea of exclusivity will change. It's early to determine best practices but there is a need to tag and track content to make money. We need to figure out how to build and maintain archive, and we need to rethink public broadcasting. Classroom use needs to change.

Technology – best practices...Technology issues at the intersection of video and education
Maurice Matiz, CCNMTL, Vice Executive Director and Director of Technology at the Center for New Media Teaching and Learning at Columbia University.
The center is trying to get faculty to use technology in a useful way. Trying to employ what it has learned over the years about technology and education. Several aspects are considered: what faculty wants students to learn; faculty needs time for brainstorming; and finding open market. He mentioned TechCrunch. There is a need to know the university's IT stance; are they protectionists or will they open up the content? Finally, students become collaborators. Students often do not know how to use their computers as an educational tool.

Shen Tong, VFinity, Founder and President of VFinity.
VFinity is a social network, which attempts to use the web as a social phenomenon and cultural force. Challenges include difficulties for libraries/archives, broadcasters/publishers, music labels, and film studios. How do we make content equally available to everyone? The software attempts to harness power of the web. It includes an intuitive web interface; users can find video/documents/images. Users can manage in a unified way. The software offers a seemless self-service, controlled vocabulary and free tagging, flexible and open architecture. Users have a dynamic workflow that includes Browser access and is search centric.

Abram Stern, UCSC/Metavid, co-founder of the Metavid Project at the University of California Santa Cruz.
Metavid is a collection of open content, attempting to create open access of U.S. House and Senate. Stern contends the film is public domain. CSPAN did not agree, so Metavid bought about $1,700 worth of film. They are archiving not just video but also closed-caption text. The linear video posed problems. They had the video files but needed to make the files useable. They found information about who is talking based on OCR name data. The archives use Ogg/Theorn software, (which Eric Blankinship let me know Macs have plug-in so I can download files). Metavid enables users to grab smaller portions of video.

Teaching and learning – best practices...Examples of the purposeful use of video in the university
Frank Moretti, John Frankfurt, Michael Preston, CCNMTL
Video in classroom should take advantage of teachable moment. The center used the expertise of Arnold Gesell to help improve teacher education through the use of video. See VITAL as an example. How do you capture details like observe, interpret, think, transfer, and revise? They built a web environment and shoot video, with help of a grant. It includes a video viewer with tools. It enables users to mark in and out points, make notes, and embed video in the essay (text box). Essays can be illustrated with clips, used like quotes, references or footnotes.

Dean Rehberger and Michael Fegan, Michigan State University, MATRIX, Rehberger is an Associate Director of MATRIX and also Associate Professor in the department of Writing, Rhetoric and American Cultures at Michigan State University. Michael Fegan is Chief Information Officer at MATRIX at Michigan State University.
The university had a digital library. Students were not using it much, which lead to the question: how can it be more effective? They wanted students to be able to access, use and reuse content. It acts as a secondary depository: students find digital objects and use digital objects. They can segment and annotate media; they can use with all types of media and combine into online presentations. It includes a layer to help undergraduates think about why and how using source materials, in a form that students fill out. The depository stores URLs, and includes a text database and access when users access. It does NOT store the media.

Judy Stern, University of California – Berkeley, User Interaction Designer at University of California – Berkeley's Educational Technology Center.
The system helps instructors use technology to engage in active learning. Some of the challenges include technology costs, service constraints, and lack of scalability. It allows students to review course materials, but on the human side, the challenges include instructor acceptance. The system involved two different threads: ETS – Educational Technology Services and the adoption of Sakai. The center employs a user-centered design. It focuses on users, attempting to fully understand users based on research and modeling.

Research and scholarly communication – best practices...The research agenda for the role of moving images in education
Richard Lucier, Scholarly Communications Institute, Director of the Scholarly Communications Institute.
The Institute is funded by Mellon Foundation and housed at the University of Virginia. Its purpose is to move scholarly communication to change. The library is at the heart of scholarship. Institute explores scholarly communications as a cyclical process. It begins with research, discovery, dissemination, etc., and eventually back to research and discovery. It deals primarily with humanities scholars. The overall goal is to create opportunities for scholars to understand and embrace digital scholarship. It is working to build cyberinfrastructure with the American Council of Learned Societies.

Patricia Renfro, Columbia University Libraries, Deputy University Librarian at Columbia University.
The libraries are building collections in different ways. Sino-Tibetan Oral History Project. Frontiers of Science. Videotaping professors and develop course materials around that video. Jazz Studies Online. They have acquired different legacy collections. Challenges to these collections include dissemination, storing/accessing/archiving, and preserving analog collections. There is a need for a proposed national agenda for video preservation, i.e., standards/practices, copyright IP, service bureaus, metadata standards.

Richard Kahlenberg, TVSmarts.com
Richard Kahlenberg is the founding archivist of the American Film Institute and Editor of TVSmarts.com.
The site generates a media menu based on the educational standards of various states. The site enables these menus to be imported into school sites. The menu can sort by age and will be based on standards. He says students score higher on tests and write more than if sent to library; however, he presented no data to back this up. It was clear this bothered people in the audience.

Finance – agendas and best practices...The economics of educational video production and distribution
David Weinstein, National Endowment for the Humanities, Senior Program Officer in the Division of Public Programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Digital humanities Initiative deals with what's going on and where the money should go. It is concerned about how best use of technology to serve public. It provides start up grants for activities like podcasting, archives, gaming, or making objects open source. It has five new programs. He felt the walls between public programs and education are collapsing.

Dan Lukash, Institute of Museums and Library Services, Senior Program Officer at the Institute of Museums and Library Services.
The Institute connects people to information and ideas. Its primary institutions for grants are libraries, museums, and institutions of higher education.

Brian Newman, Renew Media, Executive Director of ReNew Media.
Newman talked about the economics of educational video production and distribution. The reality of content is that artists want to make money. Artists want freedom to create, make a profit, but most don't. A paid educational marketplace is important. Artists are not aware of alternative licensing. A disparity exists in what goes into production and what gets back to artists. He talked a little about the Reframe Project, which enables artists to digitize video for free and film at cost. New trends are emerging: DVD on demand, digital download to own or rent. The prices at set by rights holder. The trend is heading to ingest on demand, which might involve charging after a certain number of people watch. The system needs to be sustainable: open content with profit rather than nonprofit or for profit.

Next steps I - new structures and efficiencies...Exploring new potential collaborations in the field
Frank Moretti, CCNMTL
These changes involved redefining, recontextualizing, and restructuring. These points of departure exist in the institution. They must be done within the practice. He pointed to the The Triangle Initiative as an example. These changes need to occur in the classroom, in the community, and within the university.

Mara Hancock, University of California – Berkeley, Associate Director of Learning Systems at the University of California – Berkeley's Educational Technology Center.
The center has over 0,000 hours of media, and has seen 10.6 million downloads in 2006. Dynamic media challenges include making more media, podcasts and webcasts, available as well as easier to access. The barriers include technology, proprietary code, people and culture. The system needs to be: scalable, which means reproducible; sustainable, which involves maintaining, supporting, and funding; and growable, like an ecosystem. Open content should exist in open systems. Open systems and standards lead to the ecosystem. There should be alignment across institutions. We need to teardown boundaries and learn how to be in a networked environment.

Next steps II – opening code and content...Future directions for making educational video openly available
Rick Prelinger, Prelinger Archives

Dean Jansen, Participatory Culture Foundation
Dean Jansen is Special Projects Coordinator at the Participatory Culture Foundation.

Colin Rhinesmith, Berkman Center, Harvard Law School
Colin Rhinesmith is Digital Media Producer at Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the Harvard Law School