Thanks to all who responded to my TARGET about the transition from VHS to
DVD technology. From the several responses came some common threads;
- A couple of folks were completely resistant to the change. My favorite
comment along these lines was "I am going to stick with videos until they
pry the VHS recorder out of my cold dead hand."
-Most of you indicated that you would make the transition slowly and
gradually, some mentioning that we have gone through this kind of
transitioning before--filmstrip to movie and movie to VHS
-A number of you mentioned that teachers were comfortable with VHS and would
be a little resistant to change, particularly in places where VCR and
televisions are in every classroom.
-To make the transition people talked about buying just a few players and
keeping them mobile; some were buying one per department.
-A number of people mentioned that currently there are not as many
educational DVDs out there as there are items in VHS format; the most common
places people have started making DVD purchases were in the areas of English
and Foreign Language.
-Not surprisingly, most of us were very concerned about the cost of making
such a transition, particularly those respondents who ran resource centers
that house thousands of videos.
-Some suggested not jumping into DVD purchases too quickly. As one person
put it, "Technology is progressing but that doesn't mean that the old
technologies will not be used any more. Remember the audio cassette? And
what about CD-ROM? "
-Some encouraged waiting as the price of DVD players just keeps getting
lower and lower.
-A couple of people talked about copying VHSs on to DVDs, but I'll throw in
that my understanding of copyright law is that unless the VHS format is
obsolete, such copying would not be legal.
A whole different perspective come from those who advocated moving slowly
to DVD because of other technologies on the horizon. Here are those
remarks:
"Into the mix you will also want to factor digital TV. The televisions you
are using will also become obsolete in a few years! Broadcasters will be
broadcasting digital television programs, and you may be able to record them
to hard drive or removable storage media as is now done for music. These
programs can also be interactive - your TV and computer will begin to look
similar. You might want to check with you public television stations for
more information. Public TV is currently experimenting with different ways
to use digital television for education." A little information on this
topic can be found at www.pbs.org/digitaltv/teachl.html
"I run a regional media center. We have only just begun to purchase a very
few DVD's and players to lend out . . .The thing is that so much in now
being offered in digital and streamed and store and forward technology that
I truly feel we will essentially bypass DVD as a big issue in education. . .
.many of the national vendors I speak with at conferences as well as my
fellow regional directors share this feeling."
"I'm currently having that same dilemma except we have over 5000 videos in
our district collection. I'm currently adding DVD as my purchases if
available. My thought is that as I add in DVD and weed older items that are
VHS I will change over during the next 5-10 years. But will DVD be the
format in that time? I don't think so. What I'm currently exploring is
digital licensing where we license it in digital format and video stream it
to the classrooms. This takes away shipping time and allows more than one
classroom to use it at once. I'm seeing many of the publishers and vendors
beginning to offer this and its a variety of structures. The ones that
worry me are those that you only license the videos so when you quit paying
you not longer own them. Films for the Humanities is offering a digital
purchase where you own the video and own the right to broadcast or video
stream to classrooms. It's more expensive but you only pay once per video
not ongoing and you own it. "
In conclusion, clearly this is a hot topic for all of this that will
continue to need our scrutiny. In fact, Walter Minkel of School Library
Journal got in touch with a number of people who participated in this
exchange: he will be covering this very topic in a technology feature in the
January edition.
Susan Guerrant, Library Media Specialist
Henley Middle School
sguerrant@albemarle.org
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