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One of the projects I’ve started working on lately is coming up with a centralized way to offer digital media services to the faculty at TTU. One of the goals that we have as a part of the Technology Institute is to train faculty in the use of cutting edge technology. It struck me the other day as I was working on a home brew DVR solution that one of the things that seemed to be missing in the classrooms I work lack a unified digital media center. Don’t get me wrong you can’t go to an Instructional Technology conference without hearing about Youtube and Web2.0 and other buzz topics of the day. But with all of the transition in media from analog based systems to digital there hasn’t been a unified system to show media in the classroom. For instance in most of the classrooms we have now we’ve added more and more hardware to accommodate all of the media formats that are out there. To support video and audio we have hardware for VHS, DVD, Laserdisc (believe it or not they’re still out there), Computers for internet based media and sometimes more than that. The problem I’ve seen is that there is no unifying system. For all of the talk about technology making teacher’s lives easier rather than simplifying they’ve just been given more toys to figure out. When I was in school I always enjoyed classes where teachers could relevantly tie classroom material to current events but if a teacher for example wanted to record a show on the tv and show it to the class how hard would it be in modern classrooms to play? If they record to a VHS how likely is it that they will have access to a VCR? If they don’t have a VCR at home then maybe they can record to DVD but how many people have standalone DVD recorders anyways? I guess if you’re lucky the video or audio might be available from the site but that’s a crap shoot. Lastly, I guess you could pay for it. It’s this kind of multi-formatted distribution problem that we’re facing in instructional technology.

So what’s the answer? I believe the answer lies in solutions like Mythbuntu. “What is Mythbuntu?”, you might ask. Well mythbuntu and similar products are free open source digital video recorders or sometimes called personal video recorders. They are for all intents and purposes what you think of when you see a Tivo. But systems like mythbuntu are much more than a mere Tivo. Mythbuntu is actually a cross between the Ubuntu Linux operating system and the open source project simply called MythTV. At the very heart of the MythTV project is a goal to bring together the “mythical” all in one media center. With Mythbuntu I have a feature rich preconfigured media center. With this system I can schedule and record shows like a Tivo, play DVDs, stream music, display photos, browse the web and a great deal more. The beauty is in the scalability and portability of the software. With this system one can build a server that can record multiple shows at once and over local area networks play those shows on any computer.

So what does this look like in an education setting? Well, if I were teaching a course on history and I knew an excellent series was coming on the History Channel then I could try and record that show from home and risk the problems mentioned above or I can use this system I’ve just described. Ideally a teacher would open a web browser and navigate to a web page that manages all of the scheduling and recording. Here they could choose what shows they would like recorded. In the morning when they went to school and were ready to play the video they would just simply fire of the video player on their computer and auto-magically the video would be available. The benefit if you can’t see it already is in the incredible flexibility, management and ease of use in a system like this one. The number of features that are available are just too numerous to count but suffice it to say that this system far exceeds any of the typical demands on media to date. Thanks to a very active development team on many fronts the ability to watch videos and interact with the software is not limited exclusively to Linux users but crosses over fairly easily to windows and mac users. This means very little training for teachers compared to a one OS exclusive system. It also means that they no longer have to worry about which video format they will use. A system like this also provide a great way for teachers to have access to media that they may not otherwise have access to either through like of knowledge or technological resources.

At TTU we are still in the planning and experimenting phase. There are lot of things to consider: bandwidth issues, copyright, security, and training to name but a few. But it is one of those projects that in light of current benefits is worth considering and exploring. Here is a brief presentation. This is just the first of several posts I hope to make about this project as it gets started. I imagine a lot of possibilities for this system and look forward to the exciting ways that it will be used in the classroom.