On the Trails

On Sunday morning my son Bryce and I were watching Major League Baseball.  It was 9:00 in the morning and he wanted to watch the Toronto Blue Jays vs. the Philadelphia Phillies and I wanted to watch the Pittsburgh Pirates play the Arizona Diamondbacks.  Now, before MLB.TV, this would have been impossible. I watched my game on the laptop and Bryce watched his game on the iMac.  Two baseball fans enjoying a Sunday morning.

Ah the joys of high speed Verizon FIOS.  So, as I waited for a commercial to end between innings and a thought popped into my head:

Could schools buy/download educational movies/documentaries and share them across their network via iTunes?

Here is and example scenario:

The AV person or a teacher in a grade level subscribes to the National Geographic’s Video Shorts on iTunes and on one computer. This person is in charge of populating the curricular based iTunes library. When a teacher/student wants to use one of the videos  they:

• Open iTunes on their computer
• Connect to the shared iTunes library of another computer (the computer of the person in charge of organizing the resources)
• The teacher/student chooses the video they want to view and begins teaching/learning

Pluses

1. Videos can be organized and searched
2. Physical space is saved, as teachers may not need to buy DVDs
3. The video player in iTunes provides an interactive way to learn

Potentials

1. Videos can be shared across grade levels
2. Videos can be used to differentiate instruction
3. Apple may put more educational videos in their store to choose from

Concerns

1. Bandwidth
2. Number of Connections to a shared library
3. Can we get movies we already own into iTunes to share

Technorati Tags: onthetrail, iTunes, video

Powered by ScribeFire.