Managing Media in Schools?
Schools are places full of media of various sorts, whether it is old tapes and videos to DVDs, and a variety of differing electronic files… The problem with this is that schools have to maintain a wide range of tools to be able to play back all of these different things… And in many schools that still includes the old TV & Video trolly!
However a lot of classrooms have a computer and projector in the room which is the obvious playback mechanism – So the question becomes how do we get all these different types of media into a format that we can easily playback via a PC (or Mac) and how do we store them and play them back? In addition, with the growing popularity of VLEs etc how do we enable students to watch this media even when they are not in the classroom?
Things like YouTube are great (where they are accessible in schools) but they don’t allow you to show copyright material (that the school has a licence to show) and then use huge amounts of bandwidth!
I know some Schools who manage their media by ripping DVDs and storing them in a ‘shared folder’ which teacher can go to and can play back the file in Windows Media Player etc..
We have a lot of media at school and still need to regularly record new shows off the TV and need a better solution to look after all this media. I’m just not sure what the best way to manage this process is…
So how are you currently managing your media and/or what plans to do you have to simplify the media in your school? Please let me know in the comments!