TechCrunch reviews web video

TechCrunch writes a great review of web video, noting that things have moved on since Google bought YouTube a year ago. Incredibly informative and a must for anyone looking to host video online.

Community Interest Company status

Digital Explorer is now incorporated as a Community Interest Company. We join the growing ranks of social enterprises in the UK, which famously include Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant and the Oxo Tower.

Each proposed Community Interest Company must demonstrate that its operations are in the public good and show how its assets and profits will be used to benefit the community.

It’s very important that Digital Explorer is a social enterprise and that we work with our partners and sponsors to ensure that all our work goes to helping young people learn more about the world around them, have their own voice heard and work together to create a better future.

Our main activities listed with the Community Interest Company Regulator are:

1. Set up a global network of digital youth expeditions that will change the way that young people feel about their community
2. Train pupils, teachers, NGOs and expeditions in digital communications

Any surplus that we generate will be used to subsidize our work with schools and charities.

Web video for the classroom (pt 2)

One other thought…

Please, please, please don’t host your video only on YouTube or similar media-sharing sites. Only the most enlightened schools haven’t blocked these.

By all means use a service such as tubemogul to propagate your video on a number of sites. This will mean that young people can access your content on their own terms outside of school.

I am looking to develop a hosting service for teachers, schools and other developers of educational web video. If you don’t have the ability to host web video at the moment and want your films to be viewed in the classroom, Digital Explorer should be able to help sometime in 2008. Busy times ahead!

Web video for the classroom

There are two things that I have noticed when using web video in the classroom. The first and most pertinent is pupils asking me to enlarge the player to full-screen. When using media players such as Windows Media Player or Real Player this is fairly simple. The complication comes with embedded flash video. In a Year 11 Citizenship class examining the issues of debt and aid, I used video from the Make Poverty History website. The problem was that the videos could not be enlarged. This left some of the less enthusiastic members of the class fairly disgruntled.

The solution:

• use a video player that has the functionality to enlarge to full-screen (the best I can find is Jeroen Wijering’s excellent flv player)
• ask your school IT department to upgrade to Flash version 9 (this will mean that the enlarge function will work)
• produce video using the .flv format, which will ‘stretch’ without the image becoming too blocky

The second issue is the 10-20 seconds gap between pressing play and the video starting. This is enough time for young minds to wander or assume that their teacher is a technological incompetent (I still hold that by some quirk, teachers’ ability to function a DVD/Video player has a strong inverse correlation with their length of time in the classroom). This is a mistake that we made (as with the one above) on the Offscreen Student Expedition, by having a black screen and a boring pre-loader (the small animation that shows as the video gets ready to play).

The solution:

• have an still image rather than a black screen before the video plays
• think about having some interesting animation going on so that pupils know that something is about to happen (nothing too extravagant)
• or maybe use some attention grabbing optical illusion that will keep their attention (if you stare at the dot below for long enough the grey haze recedes)

6 points for (expedition) blogging for the classroom

I have been thinking about what makes excellent and engaging blogs from the field, both from my experience setting up the site for the Offscreen Student Expedition 2007, looking at other expedition blogs for the classroom such as Cape Farewell, and planning what changes to make for the next Offscreen Student Expedition in 2008, bringing 8 young people from the Arab world to the UK in July next year.

These are some inital ideas, please let me know what you think.

1. High quality digital journalism
Today’s web-users are more discerning and sophisticated than ever before, returning only to sites that both provide high quality information and can relate their stories with appropriate, timely and professionally produced digital video, images and writing.

2. Integration of online social networking tools
Web-based social networking tools, or Web 2.0, can be integrated to increase user interactivity and provide the necessary platforms to create and cultivate an engaged online community.

There are a host of free services out there and it would be a shame if you did not make use of the likes of YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Skype, SightSpeed, tubemogul, Brightcove, etc. (thank you to Rick for the last two)

3. Fit-for-purpose educational content
If you are developing content for the classroom, make sure that you are in touch with pupils and teachers. They are the ones who will be able to tell you if the content you are providing is relevant and if the look and feel of your site is engaging for a youth audience.

4. Cutting-edge expedition communications
Updating a website from the side of a mountain or the middle of a desert is theoretically pretty simple. The difficult part is making sure that there are as few problems as possible when you are in the middle of nowhere and making sure that you produce content on time. After a hard day’s expedition, do you really want to cut a short digital video and upload content ready for the morning assembly back in London? Planning how and when digital content is going to be created and updated is essential for a good blog.

5. User-based navigation
Navigation and user-interface need to take into account end users’ requirements and design needs, rather than just the organisation’s preferences alone.

6. Best practices in appropriate moderation processes
Original content submitted to websites or blogs by the spectrum of users must be moderated in a timely and responsible fashion. This ensures that users establish and retain trust in the organisation, and prevents inappropriate content from appearing on websites.

Olympus sponsor Digital Explorer

Olympus is supporting Digital Explorer’s Google Earth training by providing the latest model from the Olympus TOUGH range for the practical sessions of the course. The Olympus µ790 SW is the ideal camera for fieldwork and expedition use.

With 7.1 megapixels it produces high quality images that still look sharp, even when projected in the classroom. It is shockproof and waterproof, tough enough to put up with a life outdoors and most pupils. The camera also has internal focusing, meaning less chance of dust wrecking the lens action.

We are looking forward to using the camera in the field and in the classroom.

Digital Explorer wins web award

The Digital Explorer – Offscreen Education collaboration for the Offscreen Student Expedition won the Best Blog in the 2007 Web Marketing Association’s WebAwards.

The judges commented that the site was a “Fabulous idea! I can see the possibilities this opportunity can open up to the communities all over the world.”

So many congratulations to the team involved: Ciara, Chris, John, Rick and Marjan!

Resources for e-safety in schools

If you are looking to develop more multimedia and online learning in your classroom, but are afraid of the child protection implications amongst other things have a look at these sites for some guidance. It’s an emerging area, so keep in touch with the policies, guidance and procedures that you develop.

• BECTA’s site on e-safety for schools
• the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre
• Learning and Teaching in Scotland’s ICT pages
• London Grid for Learning’s safety pages

The automatic veto and shunning of new technologies just creates more distance between the classroom and everyday experience. Careful work is needed to create the balance between innovation and child protection.

Google Maps – blogger vs. wordpress.com

It should have been a great day for educators and expeditions. Google Maps announces that a new function, meaning you can embed a Google Map in your very own website and add points, including video and images.

Above is an example from Digital Explorer’s test blogger site, showing a map of the Atlas Mountains with placemarks added, highlighting Jbel Toubkal and other places.

Sadly, neither of the two free blog services have the perfect solution. If you try to use wordpress.com, WordPress cleans the javascript, meaning you can’t see the map. If you use blogger, you lose all the flexibility of pages vs posts. A wordpress blog could have it’s homepage set simply to a map page.

It would radically simplify web communications for expeditions and fieldwork.

When a decent solution does appear, I will let you all know.

For now:

1. if you use blogger – you’re fine, but bug the blogger support people to have posts and pages like wordpress.com
2. if you use wordpress.com – you’re up the creek until the powers that be make changes – lobby them!!
3. if you host your wordpress blog yourself, there are some plug-ins that will help out – the best one is at the Remote Sensing Tools blog and does not require any messing around with APIs and the like

Good luck, and let me know if there are any neater solutions out there.

Climbing a mountain for a better world – sponsor me!

I am off to the Atlas Mountains tomorrow to climb the highest mountain in North Africa. I am raising money for Offscreen to help create better understanding between young people in the Middle East and the UK.

The funds will help us to involve more countries in the Middle East in our work and roll out our workshops programme to more schools in the UK.

How can you help?

We are raising funds online (click here) and please forward this email far and wide.

The Offscreen Education Programme is expanding rapidly and we want to reach far more young people in the UK and Middle East, so that they can develop proper understanding away from the flurry of negative and stereo-typed news headlines.

Click here to see the work we did in Oman and the UAE.

The video still makes me a bit teary.

So many thank you’s and salaams!