Resources

Alan Bennett, Apple Education UK

Teachers have always created and shared their own resources. Although they're typically 'home made' paper-based worksheets designed to be photocopied and reused, they are still an essential part of classroom practice and play a vital role in filling gaps left by commercial provision.

When it comes to ICT, the opposite seems to be the case. While many teachers are happy to use commercial CD-Roms and educational ICT tools, they feel less able to create content for their own use, let alone share it with their colleagues. More often than not, those creating and sharing their own ICT resources are also responsible for the subject in their school - something you could argue is hardly surprising given that you need to have reasonable ICT skills to put the resources together in the first place.

What sort of ICT resources do teachers currently create? Usually they take the form of a document or spreadsheet template, a database, a multimedia stack or even a website. All of these can be very useful and have value in a number of curriculum areas, but nevertheless still require a fair degree of expertise on the part of the author and to a certain extent, the end user.

At Apple, we believe that Digital Video (DV) provides teachers with a much easier way to create resources, record what they do and share it with their colleagues. Why? Because whilst the content can simply be a recording of what happens in the classroom whether on or away from the computer, it can be easily delivered to a wide range of ICT devices whether on CD-Rom, DVD or across broadband networks.

What is Digital Video? Well, put simply, digital video is a process where video footage is captured onto tape digitally, edited digitally and published digitally.

Key to this process is a new type of DV Camcorder, an example being the Canon MV500i, which records video footage onto tape in a digital form. Because this information is digital, it can easily be understood by a computer - all that remains is to transfer it to a desktop or laptop machine and then edit it.

Capturing video used to be a cumbersome process fraught with system and software crashes. Now, using Firewire technology developed by Apple, it's simply a question of plugging in a cable between the camera and the computer and downloading the footage. Apple's iMovie editing software makes the process of editing footage, adding titles, transitions and other effects easy - and many people say that editing a movie is easier and quicker than using a word processor.

A piece of video on a web site or CD-Rom is a true ICT resource. To illustrate this let's look at a typical example - the use of DV in a science experiment:

• DV can be used by pupils as a measuring device. Using a stopwatch to time parachute drops is notoriously difficult. However by filming the drop and using iMovie you can not only slow the footage down, but also use the editing tools to cut the clip to the points at which the parachute is released and when it hits the ground. The length of the clip is the same as the time it took for the object to fall.
• The same DV footage can be used to show how the experiment was set up and what happened when specific variables were changed. DV in this instance becomes a communication tool, enabling pupils to show others what they hoped to achieve, what they did and what happened.
• The finished movie provides the teacher with evidence of varying forms, such as the contribution of individual pupils, interaction within groups and so on.

And of course, the end result is not just a movie of a science experiment, but also another piece of content which in turn could be ideal for showing another group of students how gravity acts on different objects.

A movie of this nature is self-contained - it stands on its own. It could be incorporated in a web page or put into a Powerpoint presentation - but in the vast majority of cases, this is not necessary to get the point across. And if you think about how you might create a web-based resource to convey the same teaching points without using DV, it would probably take you much longer and require the use of several different tools. Teachers in the Becta DV Pilot (see below) reported that iMovie was so easy and intuitive to use, it didn't get in the way of the creative process - so while you do need to use a computer to edit your content, it's a lot easier than building a website.

In the hands of teachers, DV can also be used to:

• Record good practice so that it can be shared with colleagues in their school or on the other side of the country
• Communicate more effectively with parents. Why not put a school prospectus on a video DVD?

Another new source of classroom resources are the various film libraries located throughout the UK. Archive film footage once digitised can easily be brought into iMovie and incorporated into pupil work, so rather than do a piece of written work about the rise of Nazi Germany, pupils can make a movie instead. Issues such as copyright still present problems in certain situations, but the potential of using archive sources is so great, that I'm certain these issues will be resolved.

The great thing about DV is that the finished product can be stored and distributed in a variety of different forms - unlike a web page. iMovie can output to QuickTime, which means that a piece of work could be put on a CD-Rom, a website or streamed across a broadband network, to iDVD, so pupils can burn their own DVDs or most importantly, DV tape. Once on DV tape, content can be transferred to VHS which although almost a legacy technology, is still prevalent in homes - and because DV tape is digital and of perfect quality, the movie is suitable for TV broadcast.

Broadband networks are made for video - and with technologies such as QuickTime streaming server, QuickTime Broadcaster from Apple or Live Channel from Channel Storm, you can not only stream recorded video content across networks but also create live broadcast - bringing the TV studio into the classroom.

Video content delivered in QuickTime format can not only be viewed on either Macs or Windows PCs, it can also be incorporated into another video project, which is then used in another and then another and so on. It's this circle of content that makes video almost organic - one movie can grow into another. Whilst technologies such as Flash can produce content with an engaging user experience, it's not always easy to re use it elsewhere.

But perhaps the best thing about DV is that it engages and motivates learners. Early findings from the recent Becta DV Pilot where 50 schools across the country were given an iMac computer and a Canon DV Camera have shown that many pupils who have previously been turned off learning have been re-engaged into the learning process as a result of using DV - and surely this is the most exciting thing of all.