You can hear this famous line, among many others, in one of 37 new online Shakespeare plays now available to the Middlebury community. These full-length plays are based on newly restored master recordings and include closed-captioning. Performed originally by the BBC, the plays feature well-known British actors, including Alan Rickman, a.k.a. Professor Severus Snape. Here’s a short sample (from YouTube). Our full-length videos are here.

Tags

Tag Clouds

This does not mean that you shouldn’t tag content at all. Tags can still be useful for humans who want to find other posts and pages on a topic. However, if you want your page to be easier to find, your time is better invested in making sure that the content is well written, structured and relevant to a particular topic.

Directory:

• Updated the class photo roster application to work with the new class-group structure in the Active Directory. You will now see separate lists for instructors, students, and audits for each course.

Drupal:

• Internet Explorer 7 users saw a notice on our homepage about a script taking too long to load. The IE 7 rendering engine has problems displaying over 100 stories on our homepage, so people using that browser will now see a smaller, random selection. If you’re using any other browser you’ll still see all the stories.
• We’ve switched back from the OSMF player to FlowPlayer temporarily for videos. The OSMF player requires the user to have Flash Player 10 and the distribution image just includes Flash Player 9. We’re going to add a prompt to the OSMF player to let people know they need to upgrade, then put it back in production.
• Custom splash images now work in Drupal videos. To add a custom splash image to your video use the [video:url image:url] syntax.

GO:

• We’ve removed the Banner Web Scout which provided pseudo-load-balancing between the two BannerWeb servers through GO. All of the GO shortcuts for Banner now go directly to the primary server with no intermediate steps.

MiddLab:

• We’ve redesigned some aspects of the MiddLab theme to make the site easier to navigate and provide more space for project content and larger video players. Watch MiddLab next week as many new projects from the Spring Symposium will appear.

This feature has been rolled out for MiddMedia videos on Drupal and WordPress and YouTube videos on Drupal.

Don’t worry if you’re not using one of these browsers or devices. You’ll see the same Flash video player that was there yesterday.

You will now see your browser’s built-in HTML5 video player for MiddMedia videos if you are using one of these browsers or devices:

• Safari
• an iPad or iPhone

The HTML5 audio player for MiddMedia videos appears if you are using one of these browsers or devices:

• Safari
• Chrome
• an iPad or iPhone

To see a list of the supported browsers for video in YouTube, visit their HTML5 Video Player site. You can sign up there to opt-in to their HTML5 video player trial, if you like. Note: the site lists several browsers currently in their “beta” development phase. We recommend that you do not install these browsers as features of our site may not yet work in them.

Some restrictions may apply

The technology to support these features is very new and constantly changing. We’ll keep rolling out support to new browsers and devices as it becomes available and the experience is at least as good as what you get from the Flash player. For instance, Chrome currently supports HTML5 video, but we decided not to enable it for that browser because the fullscreen button doesn’t work. Firefox also supports HTML5 video, but in a different video format that we don’t currently produce for videos uploaded to MiddMedia (WebM or OGG).

Lastly, you might notice that some of the MiddMedia videos on our site cannot be played on devices like your iPad or iPhone. The method used to encode these videos didn’t produce a video in a format that these devices recognize. However, the majority of MiddMedia videos do work and we wanted to give you the opportunity to watch some of them, rather than none of them.

• ensure timely replacements of missing/damaged items
• ensure we have viable copies of materials needed for screenings and reserve
• periodically generate and review reports relating to use, condition, etc., of the collections
• work with faculty and LIS staff to review and revise policies pertaining to the collection
• monitor space needs or issues within the collection
• keep an “ear to the ground” regarding new and emerging technologies relating to video streaming or alternate delivery systems
• reconvene, and serve on, the LIS committee responsible for adding (and withdrawing) materials for the video browsing collection.

Please contact Steve with any questions about the use of the library’s video collections.  Please contact the appropriate liaison or submit a suggestion if you would like to request a purchase.

Equipment needed

USB microphone or headset (available for checkout at Davis Family Library, Armstrong Library, & the Music Library)

Tools needed

Community clips (click to download; for info, click here)

Any Video Converter (click to download; for info, click here)

Upload space (Middmedia; 500MB of space, free to all Middlebury College users)

Publishing platform (e.g. LIS Blog/Wordpress, or a wiki, or a course website)

Steps

1. Create a script and practice. Keep it simple; don’t use jargon (if you must, then explain it!) Keep your video short and to the point!
2. Using Community clips and the microphone, make your video.
3. Use Any Video Converter to convert the file from the .wmv to .mp4 (mpeg-4) file format. (NB: With a bit of trial and error, we set the conversion frame view to 720×576 and the bitrate to 768, but you should experiment and see what works best for your needs.)
4. Upload your video to Middmedia.
5. You can now embed your video directly from Middmedia into your blog, wiki, or website, or get a link to send it via email. To embed the video in this WordPress blog, we followed the instructions here.

The Middmedia page on the LIS Wiki has lots of information on how to embed video in the wiki, on blogs, and elsewhere.

There are other tools that make it easy to make video screen captures (like Jing). Take some time to explore the options, and please feel free to share tips and info. here so we can all learn from one another. Thank you to Dan Frostman for sharing Community clips with us, and to all the creators and contributors to the wiki documentation on Middmedia.

To this end, the Curricular Technology team invited a number of faculty who are innovators to show us how they have been using technology and tell us what they need.  Faculty who participated included Jeff Byers (Chemistry and Biochemistry), Hector Vila (CTLR), Enrique Garcia (Spanish), Hope Tucker (Film and Media Culture) and Roberto Veguez (Spanish).  A number of academic liaisons also participated in this session.  To learn more about what these faculty have been doing, see:

Segue from Segue » Presentations by Faculty Innovators

This situation echos previous instances when content owners have threatened our institutions with litigation for infringement, for example the various institutions whom the American Association of Publishers approached regarding e-reserves and course management systems a few years ago. It differs from the peer to peer aspect of copyright significantly because, apart now from HEOA compliance, our colleges and universities did not have liability as conduit service providers, i.e. the allegedly infringing material was not being served from our servers, we acted only as I.S.P.s. Thus, this current matter is serious. Not only does it threaten exorbitant legal expenses and damages in both dollars and reputation, by touching instruction it threatens the exercise of our missions.

Steve Worona, on EDUCAUSE’s behalf, has begun a blog to educate people about this matter and stimulate discussion in the community. http://www.educause.edu/blog/sworona/UCLAVideoStreamingDamnedDammed/197444

Please take a moment to learn more about this matter, as we are learning about it, and most especially talk with your colleagues at home and around the community. It may be that higher education must approach the issue from a range of positions (standing firm on fair use, understanding better the opportunities and limitations of the Teach Act, proactively and collectively arranging for licensing are some examples that jump quickly to mind) but what is absolutely critical is that we do so as a community, working to help each other to preserve our missions.