Category Archives: youtube

How much bandwidth?

In March, this blog served 23GB of video, which I think is a fair amount of video, well 66 hours to be exact!

So how does that compare with something like YouTube.

Well by my calculations YouTube delivers that quantity of video every second.

In 2006, YouTube was delivering 100 million videos a day and using about 200TB of bandwidth.

In 2010, they are now delivering 1000 million videos a day and probably using more than 2000TB of bandwidth.

2,000 TB us 2,000,000 GB and there are 86,400 seconds in a day.

My maths may be wrong though.

100 ways to use a VLE – #71 Embedding video

So you may be old enough to remember the launch of Channel 4 (or even BBC 2 and ITV) however in this day of Freeview, Sky and cable; our learners have access to 24 hour television and hundreds of channels.

However many people are deserting the traditional home of video, moving away from watching video on television and watching video on YouTube.

The statistics of YouTube are amazing.

In September 2008 I reported on my blog that 13 hours of video were been uploaded to YouTube every minute!

Now 20 hours of video are being uploaded every minute!

Now one of the nice features of services such as YouTube is that you can embed the video into a webpage.

This means that you needn’t worry about configuring a streaming server, encoding video, etc…

As a result it is very easy now to upload video to the web, and insert (well embed) that video into any webpage of your choice, which means pages on a VLE.

Now one of the issues you may find with your VLE is that the security settings restrict you using embedding code on pages or discussions forums on your VLE; this is certainly the case with Moodle.

So you’ve embedded the video, what next?

It’s not just about the video, you can’t just place a video on the VLE and expect it to do everything. As with video in the classroom, you need to consider the video in the context of the learning activity. You may example ask your learners to watch a short video clip and comment on the video in a VLE discussion forum. Another example would be to use a video to reinforce a resource on the VLE.

Are you stealing stuff?

So there you are creating a presentation, learning resources, handouts, learning objects, handouts…

Now in those is there any stuff, such as text, images, audio, video that you didn’t create, have “taken” from somewhere else (such as a website).

Did you think it was okay, as it was “for education” and it’s not as though you took it, you merely made a digital copy.

Now I am not of the ilk that making copies or using other people’s digital content is stealing, however I do believe we should respect the wishes of content creators.

Personally I think we as teachers and educators should be setting examples to our learners. We should be seen as role models, that learners can look up to and respect.

As soon as we decide that there are laws we shouldn’t adhere to, what are we saying to learners; that some laws are okay to be broken. Then the question has to be asked, which laws should we obey and which should we ignore. The problem with that approach is that not everyone thinks the same.

Also learners may think that “as my teacher has downloaded video from the web, it must be okay for me to download video”. Even if you feel file sharing is no big deal, how do you think the parents of a learner getting a fine, an injunction, or their internet cut off; because they were “caught” downloading illegal copies of films and TV shows.

Part of the issue is that a lot of teachers are ignorant of the law or the terms of use of various websites. They are unaware of what is allowed and what isn’t.

A prime example is YouTube. In many schools YouTube is blocked for a variety of reasons, however many teachers wish to use videos from YouTube. So they use a YouTube video download service to download the YouTube video as an FLV or an MP4 file. This file can then be played in school. From reading on Twitter most people and teachers think this is fine, as it’s “not really copying” or “it’s for education” or “if tools are available on trh web then it must be okay!”

The thing is that this process of downloading YouTube videos is a breach of YouTube terms of use.

You agree not to access User Videos (as defined below) for any reason other than your personal, non-commercial use solely as intended through and permitted by the normal functionality of the Services, and solely for Streaming. “Streaming” means a contemporaneous digital transmission of the material by YouTube via the Internet to a user operated Internet enabled device in such a manner that the data is intended for real-time viewing and not intended to be downloaded (either permanently or temporarily), copied, stored, or redistributed by the user.

The Terms of Use are quite clear, you can only stream the video and you can’t download the video.

Many content providers put content on YouTube and only want you to stream the content, if they wanted you to be able to download it they would let you download it. Michael Wesch for example does allow you to download his videos, see the “more info” on his video page.

What could happen if everyone downloads videos from YouTube is that content providers would no longer use it and would use their own system or no system at all. Just because you have the tools, and technically you can, doesn’t mean you can and should.

Another reason, your college or school management have placed the block on YouTube, by downloading the video and showing it in class, you are circumventing the block and therfore you could be in breach of your institutional AUP and internet policy, which could be a case of misconduct or breach of contract.

It should also be noted that not all videos uploaded to YouTube are legitimate and showing the video could result in legal action.

All this for just one “innocent” activity, no wonder people get confused.

But as well as not knowing what isn’t allowed, many teachers also aren’t aware of what is allowed.

For example can you show a pre-recorded DVD in the classroom? In other words a DVD which has been rented from a video store, or a DVD purchased from a retail store? Most DVDs have a disclaimer at the beginning (or the end) which explicitly says that the video can not be shown in schools, colleges, prisons, hospitals, etc….

Under the Copyright Act, you can show a DVD in a classroom for the purposes of instruction without needing an additional licence.
If it is for entertainment purposes then you do need a public performance licence.

Part of the misunderstanding arises as generally when you play a DVD you get this huge legal message indicating that your DVD is for personal use only and can not be played on oil rigs, in prisons, schools and colleges.

Part of the misunderstanding arises as generally when you play a DVD you get this huge legal message indicating that your DVD is for personal use only and can not be played on oil rigs, in prisons, schools and colleges.

That is partly true for the purposes of entertainment and you would need to purchase a licence to show a DVD for that purpose.
However for informational and instruction (ie for educational reasons) it is possible to show that DVD in a classroom.

Teachers and lecturers have a statuory right (it is enshrined in law, the Copyright Act to be precise).

From the Government Intellectual Property Office.

“Performing, playing or showing copyright works in a school, university or other educational establishment for educational purposes.  However, only teachers, pupils and others directly connected with the activities (does not generally include parents) of the establishment are in the audience.  Examples of this are showing a video for English or drama lessons and the teaching of music.  It is unlikely to include the playing of a video during a wet playtime purely to amuse the children.”

From Filmbank.

“A copyright licence is required to screen films in educational institutions under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (UK), if the film is being screened for entertainment purposes rather than for the purposes of instruction or as part of the lesson.”

So could you rip that DVD and put it on a laptop or on the VLE?

Ah no.

Ripping a DVD would be in breach of the EU Copyright Directive which “prohibits circumvention of copy protection measures“. So ripping the DVD is a criminal offence.

Confusing.

Of course.

This blog entry was inspired by a blog post by Simon Finch. He writes about society and using stuff, he makes an interesting observation towards the end of his post:

Web 2.0, and the rest, is making us a world of creators and publishers. We’re uploading pictures, music, videos, Flash activities, personal writing, presentations, teaching resources and more – and so are our learners. That image that you’ve found, is just the thing to add value and impact to the learning activity for that needy class of yours. But that image doesn’t belong to an international image company – no, it belongs to someone like you..

Now we are not just using stuff from faceless organisations we are also using stuff from people like us, people we know.

So how do we change things?

Most people I know think that 33mph in a 30mph zone is okay, a few people think 40mph is okay, a smaller number think that 50mph is not over the top…. the reality is that less than 30mph is best. Not because I think so, but because society thinks so.

If you don’t like a law then we need to change that law. The problem with copyright law is that the money to change that law is coming from publishers and not from the consumers – but having said that, that is often the case, the consumer suffers, whilst “big business” profits.

I also agree with Simon when he says:

Yet the real point is this; we must teach our learners to value IPR. It is simply wrong to take without asking. It is wrong to pass what’s not yours, as your own. We need to instill respect for one and other – that is our priority.

I don’t even think it’s all about money – it’s about acknowledging people’s value.

At the end of the day, my solution is to stop using “borrowed” third party content and start using content that I am allowed to use. As a teacher in the 1990s I did right click, now I use Flickr for creative commons licensed images.

The thing is that there are now lots of legal solutions to many of the copyright problems that teachers face, we can provide learners with content which is legal. Those of us who support learners need to provide solutions, not barriers to teachers. Teachers also need to be more creative and willing to compromise. Finally rights holders need to also be more creative in allowing people to use their content in creative and educational ways and allowing it to be used legally.

Update: as mentioned in the comments below, just saying “I use Flickr” was insufficient. I use creative commons licensed images from Flickr and properly attribute the photographer as required according to the licence. I made the wrong assumption that people would assume that I was talking about CC images from Flickr and not all images from Flickr.

Amplified Twittering and Social Reporting

Today I was at the JISC Teaching and Learning Experts Group Meeting in Birmingham.

jiscexperts0409

I always enjoy these meetings as you get a huge wealth of expertise, knowledge and examples to take away with you back to your own institution.

We used Twitter quite a bit today, so much so that the tag #jiscexperts09 became a trending tag on Twitter.

Lots of comments, discussions and conversations. Some went off tag and continued outside the event.

A really useful and interesting back channel to what was happening in front of us.

By the afternoon the stream of Twitter had declined considerably, in the main as we were in smaller groups with a lot more face to face interaction and conversations. We’re not talking about a small drop off, but a considerable drop, about 95%, in use of Twitter.

It’s not as though we weren’t finding Twitter useful, one delegate said to me that he saw me using Twitter as a way of asking a question without needing to put my hand up.

It did make me start thinking about how we use Twitter and the reasons for using Twitter.

In the morning session with presentations from the front, while we were a “passive” audience some of us were using Twitter to communicate what we were seeing to the Twitter community, discussing between ourselves and initiating conversations with other people not at the event.

Now were we doing this because we found the presenters boring? No because they weren’t, their presentations were very interesting. Much more as we were an audience we found the time to engage with Twitter and the Twitter community. Listening means that we can often add commentary and 140 characters means that it doesn’t take long or captures our attention away from the formal presentation at the front.

In the afternoon we split into smaller groups and discussed the three key areas, e-assessment, learning spaces and social software. As we discussed there was very little or no interaction on Twitter. We were “too busy” interacting and discussing.

Now this didn’t mean we didn’t want to share with Twitter, much more we were so busy we didn’t have the time.

What does this mean though when using Twitter at an event?

You do need to consider why you are using Twitter at an event. If using it as a record of the event, then it is a very poor tool for that, need to record an event then use a different tool.

If you are using Twitter to allow the delegates to converse about the event in a kind of back channel then the fact they are not using it, is probably not a bad thing, as they are probably interacting face to face. However the lack of Tweets in the afternoon in our session meant that I had very little idea what happened in the other parallel sessions. As for people outside the event, they had even less idea!

There may be an opportunity here to have (what I am going to call) social reporters in breakout sessions to record thoughts and discussions on Twitter. Downside for this is that Twitter is very much about the here and now and not really suited for looking back over or for engaging and interacting with even 15 minutes after an event. However will be useful for those outside the event.

One of the downsides of Twitter (which is also a plus point) is that it is just text and only 140 characters of just text. If you did use social reporters then they could also use other tools to help capture the event for both the delegates and others. They could be uploading presentations to Slideshare, posting photographs to Flickr, pushing videos to YouTube, broadcasting live using Qik, blogging, recording to Audioboo, etc…

You can often rely on the delegates to amplify a conference or an event through the use of Web 2.0 tools, should you be supporting the process with social reporting?

YouTube Educational

YouTube have launched a new educational channel.

YouTube EDU is a volunteer project sparked by a group of employees who wanted to find a better way to collect and highlight all the great educational content being uploaded to YouTube by colleges and universities. We’ll feature some of these videos on the home page on Friday and elaborate further in a separate post on that day.

http://www.youtube.com/edu

And for those that block YouTube TechCrunch has an interesting article on the new service.

Techcrunch also mentions a new video site for education, Academic Earth.

When Richard Ludlow was struggling in a linear algebra class at Yale, he scoured the internet for answers and stumbled upon a full video course available online from one of MIT’s mathematics professors, Gilbert Strang. He realized that there was an opportunity to create an easily accessible online platform for academic video courses and guest lectures, much like Hulu does for television content. As he did more research, he found that academic resources were grossly underutilized, as they were scattered across different sites and offered in varying file formats, making them difficult to find and browse.

So Ludlow launched Academic Earth with the goal of building a user-friendly platform for educational video that would let anyone be able to freely access instruction from the scholars and guest lecturers at the leading academic universities.

Some nice resources for our learners.

It’s definitely not for girls

One of the nice things that you do with YouTube is see the statistics for your videos.

For the Digital Divide Slam at ALT-C 2008 I with Steve and Joss produced a short video entitled, “It’s not for girls” looking at the digital divide in respect to gender.

Looking at the stats for it (as it is currently my most popular video) I was amused by the gender stats, click the image for the larger version.

It's definitely not for girls

Should be taken with a pinch of salt really as the stats only cover the last few days and not the whole demongraphic of who has viewed the video.

So what about the video, well here it is again.

Live at the MoLeNET 2008 Conference

Decided to broadcast my question to the MoLeNET 2008 Question Time panel live over Qik. I was asking the question how should colleges address services such as Qik, Flickr and YouTube in regard to privacy, data protection and copyright. All views expressed are those of the individuals only.

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.692678&w=425&h=350&fv=]

more about "Live at the MoLeNET 2008 Conference", posted with vodpod

13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

The Official Google Blog has a really insightful and interesting posting on the future of internet video. One interesting statistic is that thirteen hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute!

What Google think is that:

In ten years, we believe that online video broadcasting will be the most ubiquitous and accessible form of communication. The tools for video recording will continue to become smaller and more affordable. Personal media devices will be universal and interconnected. Even more people will have the opportunity to record and share even more video with a small group of friends or everyone around the world.

I am not even sure it will take as long as ten years!

The new compact MP4 Flip’esque cameras that are now available make it even easier to shoot and upload video.

At ALT-C I was broadcasting video live from my phone over the internet, I recorded, edited and uploaded a video in 30 minutes in a workshop.

I wanted to share my video of the ALT-C and I was very able to do so and in HD!13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

ALT-C Gala Dinner

One of the nice things about the ALT Conference is the Conference dinner. In previous years the good stuff was the company and the conversation.

This year, that was just as good, but the food was pretty good too!

In an interesting move, ALT worked with local FE colleges to design and cook a menu, and what a fantastic job they did. The colleges working with the catering staff at Headingly Cricket Ground (where the meal was held) created, cooked and served a fantastic meal.

Anyway here is my video of the evening.

I did shoot this in HD using a similar camera to this Panasonic HD Camera. I then imported the video from the SD card into iMovie 08. This is a much quicker process than using tape and capturing that way. Once in iMovie, I edited the clips I had taken and added caption cards. The final cut was then exported into a Quicktime format, before been imported into iMovie HD 06.

Why import it into the previous version?

So I could add some special effects. I transformed the film into black and white, before I “aged” the film adding dust, hairs, scratches and a bit of a wobble….

I also removed the original soundtrack, which because of the environment was full of crowd noise! I then found some excellent royalty-free creative commons licensed silent movie type music, which downloaded and imported into the movie. The movie was now finished.

Now I could have converted it into suitable format and then uploaded to Youtube. However what I actually did was import it back into iMovie 08 and uploaded it to YouTube that way.

Why?

Because it was easier.