Last year my school adopted a superb video storing program known as Mediacast. I was in on the ground level of this web-based media retrieval site, getting basic training when it was first rolled out. Now I instruct all district teachers on how to use this program.
I love it. It enables quick access to all of districts' videos. Contrast this with the days when we had to reserve an actual VHS tape or DVD via our school library and hope that it played correctly and we actually still had it someone in the recesses of the cave that was our video storage room. Today I log in, search for the title I want, then either reserve it or create a link to it so my students can access it via Moodle. It's a dream for me.
Until today. Due to licensing issues, there was only one "copy" of The Great Gatsby available. No problem. Though there are four teachers using the same video, we simply create a link and can watch the 3-5 minute clips at our leisure - or rather, however it might fit into our daily plan. (Yes, we are so aligned, we teach the same basic lesson each day.) This was impossible with the old system, where there was literally only one video and we had to get the librarian to play it from the library, which meant we couldn't time it with our individual class plans.
But today we had an EPIC FAIL. Medicast kept creating phantom "reservations" where it claimed a certain teacher had control of the one license for two hours at a time. Only that never happened. Some of the teachers it said were using it hadn't even viewed the video this year! After numerous emails and phone calls to numerous techies, the librarian, and my fellow teachers - we still haven't figured it out. So my seventh period class was without video supplements. I guess that's why they say as teachers we must be flexible.
But the truth is, even with the jostle I experienced today, I love integrating video clips into my lessons. Those short films help more visually-oriented students. Such as with our discussion today about the green light at the end of Chapter 1. The kids get the fact that it's important, but that's about as far as their minds can take them. Until they see the video clip that very clearly gives a BIG clue about its significance. And that's what I most like to see - those "aha" moments that make it all worth while.
