Students use Univ. media streams
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first in a series on new media technologies on campus.
YouTube.com – which Google said Monday it will buy for $1.65 billion – hosts 100 million videos a day, including homemade movies of break dancers poppin’ and lockin’ to hip-hop beats.
At the University, streaming media servers have hosted videos of professors’ lectures and promotional films for campus colleges for the last three years.
Like YouTube, the University’s Streaming Media Web site uses streaming technology, which means students can watch videos as they are being transferred over the University’s network.
The Terry College of Business and the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources are the biggest users of the University’s streaming media servers.
Those colleges have several gigabytes of files stored on the Web site’s servers, said Sean Hessenthaler, instructional technology consultant with the University’s Enterprise Information Technology Services.
Eugene MacIntyre, public relations coordinator for the Warnell School, said the college uses the streaming servers to host promotional films about the school for prospective students.
The Warnell School also posts videotaped seminars of visiting lecturers for students who cannot attend the event, MacIntyre said.
He said the college is exploring the use of online videos for classes at satellite campuses.
Streaming media offers advantages over conventional downloads and podcasting, Hessenthaler said.
With downloads and podcasts, the user usually has to casts, the user usually has to wait until the data transfer is complete before he can start watching or skip to a particular part of the file, Hessenthaler said.
Streaming media allows the user to begin playing the file as soon as a buffer, a small portion of the file, has been established. It also allows the user to skip to any part of the file at any time.
Hessenthaler said some professors use the streaming server because they want to protect content.
The streaming format is more secure for copyrighted material because it is difficult to copy streamed content, he said.
“It’s gradually growing in usage,” Hessenthaler said, adding that instructors were finding more ways to integrate video and audio into their classes and research.
Bert DeSimone, EITS communications officer, said the purpose of the service is for instruction.
Meanwhile at Georgia Tech, students post homemade movies to their school’s servers as part of a campus- sponsored movie festival, said Sean Brennan, technical manager with the school’s Office of Information Technology.
At the University, the servers are restricted to academic departments and individual instructors, Hessenthaler said.
DeSimone said there are no plans to extend the streaming service to individual students.
However, Hessenthaler said campus groups with a faculty sponsor can access the service.
