[LM_NET] HIT: Video Streaming

[Janice Utsch <utschj@LCMRSCHOOLS.COM>]

Thanks to all who replied to my query.  Here are the results.
A.  United Streaming was by far the vendor most often used for video
streaming.    
B.  The second most popular vendor was Safari Montage.  I didn't hear from
anyone who had been using them for more than a year.
C.  Also mentioned was Power Media Plus.
Listed below are some of the responses received.

1.  We are doing a pilot with United Streaming.  We're a bit disappointed
with the quality of the video resolution and with the lack of breadth in
content.  One high school teacher thinks that a lot of their videos talk
down to high school students.  We do like that United Streaming allows us to
save the videos to computers, flash drives etc. and also to insert them in
to Power Point presentations.     We are considering Safari Montage for next
year.  If I remember correctly, they received a better review (A+) in SLJ
than United Streaming (A-).  

2.  We use United Streaming by Discovery School. It is really good. Lots of 
videos, image clips, lesson ideas etc...

3. It's not a bad idea to have access to both Safari Montage AND United
Streaming. Pros with United Streaming: you can save them to a portable
medium, such as a CD or flash drive, you can access the site remotely,
students can access the site, and they have much of the Discovery catalog of
videos available online. Cons: because the videos are low resolution, they
pixelate when shown full-screen using a projector, both downloading and
streaming use a huge amount of bandwidth, causing your system to slow to a
crawl. Their Discovery Educators Network is great, though, and I have never
had any problem with their customer or technical services. I like Safari
because of the ability for multiple teachers to be showing video with no
loss of network functionality, the quality of the video is so much better
when projected full-screen, and the selection is particularly good for the
education field. Again, the two companies' various pros and cons seem to
balance each other out.  

4.  We use unitedstreaming.com (Discovery Education unitedstreaming) and
like it.  However, you must have up-to-date technology to successfully run
it.  We have a district wide license.

5.  We use United Streaming and PowerMediaPlus, both provided by our
regional education service center (a wonderful group of folks).  We really
like both of these vendors.   Discovery Education (as in the Discovery
Channel) is the United Streaming owner and has a nice extra feature
connected with it called the DEN (Discovery Educator Network) that has
further resources like lesson plans for those educators who are really into
it.  It's an application process for that, but I thought it was fairly
simple to apply.

6.  The last issue or two back of SLJ reviews the three vendors of video
streaming products.
 








Janice Utsch, Library Media Specialist
Richard M. Teitelman School
Lower Cape May Regional School District
Cape May, NJ  08204
utschj@lcmrschools.com
http://rmtmedia.lcmrschools.com <http://www.rmtschool.org/mediap.htm> 


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