Today’s generation is “growing up digital”, yet “wired for distraction.”

Matt Richtel of the The New York Times put it so eloquently, as he recently covered this emerging trend to illustrate a bigger academic issue.

A myriad of tech toys are luring students’ focus from their school-related tasks: computers, laptops, iPads, iPods, smartphones, handheld gaming consoles, and the list goes on ad nauseam! Imagine looking through the eyes of these millennial youngsters.

How can a standard textbook compete with the fun and interactivity of an e-book reader? How does a dull worksheet compare to a smartphone?

As educators and as a society, we must embrace new technology and applications, instead of trying to battle them or ban them from learning environments. SnapStream is a fervent believer in integrating technology into the classroom, and our specialty encompasses TV search and TV streaming.

Kids love TV. It’s a hot medium with moving pictures and sounds that combine to form a brilliant memory aid when it comes to retaining information. While TV is nothing new (per se), it’s still the most influential and powerful source of breaking news and local updates. (See results of a fascinating broadcast study released earlier this year.)

Plus, the delivery mechanism of TV is constantly evolving. Look at Google TV, which melds the Web and social apps with traditional TV. Consider SnapStream’s technology, which enables keyword search over televised closed-captioning.

While textbooks contain unchanging history, television adds a freshly updated perspective to the lesson.

Find a relevant program on the subject or unit in progress, and the planned lesson can be adapted to what’s airing today. New stories and developments found on the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, CNN and elsewhere make for a brilliant curricular supplement.

So, what have we learned?

Students will be more engaged and stimulated when learning is hands-on. Taking the fun-and-games gadgetry they use outside of school, and using it in school, could be the recipe for a breakthrough.

And when technology funding is an issue, there are public service programs, such as Cable in the Classroom, and government grant programs like Ed-Tech, designed to help with that. Because let’s face it, the iPad is a luxury for a public school system… but television? Open access to TV should be a staple in all classrooms. (20th or 21st century!)

Readers, I’d love to know, what ways are you using technology in the classroom today? Feel free to share how you’re innovating with what budgets you have.

On July 27, the Library of Congress gave American educators the best back-to-school gift EVER. Better than any orchard-fresh apple or floral bouquet.

Under the newest revisions to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), it’s now considered a-okay to burn DVDs for educational or noncommercial use, which ranges in purpose from research to news reporting.

Among the five other new exemptions, it’s also now 100% legitimate to jailbreak the iPhone. Yet while that’s been plastered all over the news, why has the academic impact garnered so much less media attention?

University Response

Most educators have long assumed that the Fair Use clause which applies to publications would likewise apply to DVDs, and other new forms of digital media. Thus, the sentiment across the educational community is frustration with the federal government for failing to address rapidly emerging technologies, such as streamable and downloadable Internet video.

At Emerson College, where the Journalism Department uses SnapStream, the new copyright exemption is not going to dramatically change the way courses are taught, according to Assistant Journalism Professor Paul Niwa.

“However, the change to the DMCA [does] lift the burden of hypocrisy in the classroom,” Niwa commented in an e-mail.

“It has been uncomfortable for professors to try to convince students to respect copyrights while violating copyrights every time they show a DVD in class.” – Asst. Journalism Professor Paul Niwa, Emerson College

How it Plays Out with SnapStream

As you may know, SnapStream enables not only TV search and clipping, but also DVD burning of recorded televised content. Some professors and teachers like to archive and share files with hard copies, even with the options available for electronic storage and e-mail.

Up until now, this whole matter has openly resided in the “grey area” of copyright law. As the dreamers and makers, we have always put trust in our end-users to do the right thing, to harness our TV Search technology for good, under Fair Use and not Abuse.

But just to make sure no one is ripping movies to enhance a personal DVD collection, we do have tight administrative settings in place to limit and restrict user access to specific features.

In the Future

Looking ahead three years to the next official review cycle of the DMCA, Niwa says that his colleagues will proceed teaching with their best judgment.

“This year’s revision of the DMCA is a missed opportunity to encourage vibrant conversations between citizens about art, ideas and science,” Niwa expressed.

“In the meantime, citizens will continue to connect and create content without explicitly defined copyright protection.”

Keeping our good word and following up from this previous post, we’re giving you the replay of our J-School webinar featuring Content Supervisor Paul Hitlin at the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Paul Hitlin joined us on 5/26 before a virtual group of university educators, all eager to learn about fresh methods of conducting research, as well as sources for funneling data-rich content into their institutions of higher learning.

Catch a glimpse into PEJ below. The clip illustrates how they’ve incorporated SnapStream into their quantitative research process, which is quite systematic. Visit our YouTube channel to view the remaining chapters of the webinar, including further insight from Paul on how they used to do things pre-SnapStream.

Top 10 things you didn’t know about PEJ:

10. Under the umbrella (not Rihanna’s)
It’s one of seven projects under the umbrella of the Pew Research Center

9. Defined by what they’re NON
“NON partisan, NON ideological & NON political”

8. They’re not a think tank, but
A “fact tank,” navigating the information revolution

7. You’ll never guess their claim to fame
The largest human coding news organization in the U. S. of A

6. Get this, they even have human bots
Well, kind of. 15 full-time coders that scour 52 media outlets daily

5. On a mission that’s possible
To evaluate and study the performance of the press (via content analysis)

4. Historically speaking
It started 9 years ago in the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

3. Serious news flash and power
News coding research began in mid-2006, with DVD burners and manpower

2. GRANTED for curricular support
Stony Brook University gave PEJ a grant to fund the SnapStream Server

1. Searching TV is a snap!
The team upgraded to SnapStream in January 2010

Publishing widely regarded content analysis, the Project for Excellence in Journalism serves an important role: keeping the industry in check.

A non-profit, non-partisan organization under the umbrella of Pew’s Research Center, PEJ is a vital resource for journalists and citizens dedicated to the study and reflection of the press.

With teams of analysts watching and dissecting broadcast news on a daily basis, the Project makes great use of the SnapStream Server to capture traditional television and stream recordings right from their desktops, all in the name of empirical research.

Speaking to the Project’s Content Supervisor, Paul Hitlin, I gathered that this type of technology has made their workflow become much smoother; they were able to eliminate the hassle of burning DVDs and bringing them to their work stations, not to mention keeping them organized!

What they find useful about going digital: they can directly play back content and archive it. This makes it easy to handle simultaneous things–like side-by-side comparisons of news outlets and writing up research findings–all in one place, from the PC.

Paul Hitlin has graciously agreed to share his insights from the front lines, covering the bases of broadcast news analysis. On the horizon, he sees vast potential for the PEJ to expand the scope of quantitative trends they can isolate in the media from the source of TV search technology.

For professors and professionals in journalism and communications, there’s so much you can learn from Paul and what PEJ is doing. I hope you’ll join us next Wednesday, May 26 for a live webinar and interactive question and answer session.

Alexandra Fenwick at the Columbia Journalism Review interviewed me on a recent trip to New York City. That interview resulted in this piece about SnapStream and how folks are using it in academia and in entertainment. Check it out!

Learn how Plymouth Public Schools streams TV

Join the conversation at our webinar next Wednesday with Rich Trudeau, director of technology for the Plymouth Board of Education. He’ll be logging in with us to co-host “Streaming TV into your School” on March 31 @ 2:30 PM CST. (That’s 3:30 EST/12:30 PST.)

Rich will share his thoughts on media delivery and streaming TV. It’s a real treat when we get to bring a current customer into the mix, live and ready to interact. It makes things more three dimensional for the attendees and also opens up the floor for discovering how SnapStream flows into real-world application.

The setup at Terryville High School in Rich’s district allows 50 classrooms to connect with the SnapStream Server over the LAN. From their PCs, teachers can record the freshest-airing educational content and search by keyword to pinpoint subject-related programs.

Teachers at Terryville can then create focused clips, or stream the full-length programs into their classroom activities. Up to 10 channels can DVR at one time, so conflicts don’t ever occur, and everything is stored in a shared video library that holds 2,000+ hours. No more bulky VHS and DVD archives!

One year out with SnapStream, Rich tells us that teachers in his district are “definitely integrating it into their plans books” and are “more than happy with it.”

To hear more from Rich Trudeau, consider joining us next Wednesday, March 31. Sign up here.

The Sinclair Library at the University of Hawaii at Manoa maintains the only extensive archive of television broadcasts about Hawaii in the state. The library, which for decades relied on videotapes and VCRs, recently switched to a SnapStream Server to ensure the integrity and longevity of its media collection.

The Challenge
In the past, student workers at the library selected broadcasts from published TV listings — and did the taping, quality, and pre-cataloging checks manually, which required hours of work and thousands of videotapes. “We can’t buy Super VHS tape quality anymore. The VCR is obsolete,” explains RuthMarie Quirk, manager of operations at Sinclair Library, who sought a digital solution.

The Solution

After two months of testing, the library in October 2009 deployed a 10-tuner SnapStream Server with 4 terabytes of storage as its exclusive TV-recording device. “SnapStream replaced the prior system completely,” Quirk says. “We save money on supplies [video tapes], and we can search for shows just by looking for the term ‘Hawaii.’ It saves hours of student work each week.”

“The entire process of setting up recordings and processing recorded shows is much easier and faster with SnapStream,” says Emily Albarillo, the digital media specialist.

“Having the shows in a digital format will make them easier to access in the future and also makes viewing much simpler. Storage also takes much less physical space compared to stacks of VHS tapes.”

View Full Case Study >

Join us on Tuesday, November 17th for our web seminar geared towards Media and Public Relations Specialists of higher learning institutes interested in monitoring their schools TV media coverage.

If you are currently using a media monitoring subscription service to track TV mentions of your school and its affiliates, then you’ve realized how quickly the price of video clips adds up.

Unlike traditional media monitoring subscription services, the SnapStream Server is a one time purchase, turnkey appliance that enables you to record, search and create unlimited high-quality clips without any incremental costs. A cross between a DVR and search engine the SnapStream Server enables you to immediately pinpoint any mention of interest and then quickly and properly respond to the coverage.

SnapStream is currently used in Public Affairs Offices to:

• Record & search thousands of hours of TV
• Pinpoint mentions of interest
• Create unlimited clips of full recordings
• Respond appropriately and quickly to TV coverage

Attend our one hour web seminar to learn more about the benefits Media and Public Relations Specialists have found by implementing the SnapStream Server
into their workflow.

Web Seminar: TV Monitoring for Public Affairs Officers in Higher Education
When: Tuesday, November 17th, 2009; 2:30 – 3:30 PM (CST)
Cost: Free

Sign me Up!

On Tuesday, July 14th, join us for our web seminar geared towards K-12 schools looking to stream television to the classroom.

The SnapStream Server is a DVR appliance that allows schools to distribute television using their existing LAN, projectors and electronic whiteboards, eliminating the need for expensive RF cable drops, traditional TVs, VCRs and DVRs. In addition, the SnapStream server gives you the flexibility to record anything on TV, from PBS to Discovery to the History Channel to CNN. And unlike Safari Montage or Discovery Streaming, the SnapStream Server does not come with any expensive subscription fees.

Using educational TV programs in the classroom, teachers can reinforce and expand on material being taught and increase student interest in learning. SnapStream makes TV useful to educators in entirely new ways — using SnapStream’s easy-to-use TV search technology, teachers can pinpoint relevant TV content themselves and then easily create clips and download for use in their class curriculum.

Attend our web seminar to learn more about providing your teachers with a valuable new teaching tool – the SnapStream TV Server.

Web Seminar: Stream TV to the classroom over the LAN
When: Tuesday, July 14th; 2:30 CST

Sign me Up!