BVSD DIGITAL CONTENT INITIATIVE (DCI)
FAQs
OVERVIEW
1. What IS digital Content?
-Digital Content can be animation, audio, graphics, images or video. Digital content is usually stored on a computer server and can be transferred and shared easily.
2. What are the benefits of Digital Media?
- Curricular Resources- DCI will provide thousands of digital media such as but not limited to video clips, virtual labs, audio files, pod casts, and lesson plans
- Available On Demand- resources will be available for teachers and students 24/7
- Classroom Availability: DCI brings digital resources to every district classroom computer, which represents new ground for technology integration
- Equity- DCI provides district-wide equitable access to digital media. BVSD is also creating a beneficial partnership with the Boulder Public Library. We are in collaboration to grant teachers and students access to a vast variety of digital resources at no cost to our district.
3. Why Digital Content in BVSD?
Over the last 5 years, many BVSD educators have been asking for digital media that can be streamed or downloaded to their classroom computer. BVSD has had an interest in delivery digital content to the schools, but bandwidth has been the limiting major factor. Now that our bandwidth will soon be state-of-the-art, we plan to house thousands of digital video clips as well as other digital media that will be available to teachers and students 24/7.
FUNDING QUESTIONS
1. How is the DCI funded?
The Digital Content Initiative is funded by by two sources:
a) the 3A bond pays for the equipment and management software that serves digital resources to schools; and
b) annual funds taken from the closure of the DIMC booking operation will be re-purposed into subscription-based digital resources that will be served to schools.
TRAINING QUESTIONS
1. What are the professional development plans associated with this initiative?
BVSD employees we will be offered a variety of training opportunities:
- District level classes for all classroom teachers (will be found in Avatar)
- School-based classes upon request
- Train the trainer classes for selected super users at each school to empower the school with an experienced training cadre
- Online resources
2. Who are the people in my building that will know the most about using digital content ?
Your media specialist, tech contact, and your school's super user.
3. Current training options wheel. Click HERE.
PROCESS QUESTIONS
1. Are we implementing and testing this project in small environments before we roll it out to the entire district?
Yes, we have a committee, Digital Content Task Force, consisting of educators from elementary, middle, and high schools that will participate in various testing phases. The first phase will be done by a handful of teachers in the DC Task Force at various schools (or from homes, depending on bandwidth limitations). The second phase will be a pilot at the school level. The locations will be determined by the Digital Content Task Force and the realities of the WAN roll-out. The final phase will be implementing the technology at the district level, across all schools.
TIMELINE QUESTIONS
1. When will this new technology be available to me in my classroom?
Depending on the roll-out of our bandwidth and our scaled testing process, we hope to have this technology fully available to teachers in 2010.
GREATEST CHALLENGES
1. Projectors and bulb replacement
At the moment, schools are responsible for purchasing projectors and replacement bulbs. However, I.T. realizes the financial burden of projectors on the schools. We are looking at applying any remaining bond funds towards an allocated amount of projectors per school to be shared or available for check-out.
Acquiring projectors using a phased-in approach over multiple years (as opposed to all at once) may ensure more manageable replacement costs.
2. How will substitute teachers access these resources?
Access to these resources will require a bvsd log in. If a substitute teacher does not have a log in, then these resources will not be available. We are working on a solution to provide some limited access to substitutes, but any firm answer is still premature. However, with thoughtful planning teachers can save items to DVD for viewing on a TV and DVD player.
3. How will students access these resources?
Students will also have access to these resources at school, home, or public library by using their unique user name and password.
FUNCTIONALITY QUESTIONS
1. Can a video be projected via a TV, or just a projector?
Video can be displayed on a TV by purchasing additional set top box hardware. The concern is spending money on equipment that will soon be obsolete in our schools (both TVs and set top boxes). I.T. is in discussion on recommended equipment for schools.
2. What if we have older TVs?
Additional equipment can be purchased to make older TVs work, but the cost may exceed the value of the TV. I.T. is still in discussion over recommended equipment for the schools.
3. How do classrooms hear the video?
BVSD I.T. has recommended equipment that will be installed on all newly constructed classrooms. The equipment includes speakers mounted on the ceilings of the classroom. We understand the majority of the classrooms will not have this new equipment in the immediate future, so it is recommended that these classrooms use regular computer speakers that can be plugged into a laptop or desktop computer.
STABILITY QUESTIONS
1. How can we be sure this will work and run reliably?
We realize for the DCI to be successful, we need to make it work! We plan to test the reliability through our piloting/testing phases and have the system working and reliable once we roll it out district wide. After the roll-out, our plan is to have a well trained district staff as well as contractual support agreement with our future vendors.
HOME ACCESS/USE QUESTIONS
1. What capabilities will we have at home?
Teachers and students will have the same capabilities at home and at school. All video will be available through a web browser available 24/7 including the Boulder Public Library resources.
COPYRIGHT QUESTIONS
1. Are there copyright issues related to digital content?
2. What are the copyright issues with recording digital cable channels and videos in MediaCAST? NEW_9/09
Complicated. For example:
•All videos we have licenses from bulk providers (Learn 360, CCC, and other) have rights to use, download, prep at home, store on CD, and such.
•All DIMC Tier 1 videos we plan to buy or lease digital rights to have different rules, which we will apply to each title and control access through MediaCast
•There are different rules for recording off-air broadcasts than for the above licenses
•Still, some users are still unaware of the new interpretation out now for FAIR USE guidelines, and base most of their understanding of FAIR USE on past practice, not currently accurate given the new guidelines
•We plan an intensive staff development piece for teacher-librarians in our April inservice on the new guidelines and their interpretation
•We plan to explore this issue in the rollout schools ( See http://bvsd.org/iteach/Pages/DCI.aspx ) starting with the 5 Phase I schools, and then the 6 phase II schools. This is well before district-wide rollout occurs
•We are uncertain as to whether to enable the recording feature until we have covered the legal issues with school teacher-librarians.
SCHOOL-BASED QUESTIONS
1. We currently have TVs and DVD players in our schools. Can we download this digital content and burn it onto a DVD for use on our present TVs and DVD players if we don't have sufficient projectors?
Yes. You can save items to DVD, to CD, or to flash or hard drives for later showing.
2. How can we use this if we don't have sufficient projectors in our school?
If your school has minimal projectors, a check-out process can be implemented for staff. Schools have had success with checking out projectors out of a dedicated space, such as the libray, or allocating projectors at the department or grade level.
Videos can also be viewed without a projector using the computers in the school. The students can view videos on computers in a computer lab, classroom, or library. Students will also have access to view videos at home for enrichment or curriculum support.
3. Can we use this if our school has a closed-circuit distribution system? How will this initiative affect our system?
We have high hopes that the selected solution will work with legacy distribution systems. We do not know the details of how this initiative will affect the current systems. Once we have selected our hardware solutions, we will be able to learn more details.
4. Can our building bandwidth really support this system?
After your school building gets upgraded to fiber, your network will support this system.
CONTENT QUESTIONS
1. How will digital content providers be selected? What are some examples of these providers? Do you have any sites I can explore to learn more about these providers?
We currently have a committee consisting of elementary, middle, and high school teachers as well as community members and district content administrators that is providing a thorough evaluation of all content solutions available to BVSD. The committee developed a criterion sheet containing all necessary components that teachers need to easily integrate video into the classroom. The criterion sheet was used to score all participating vendors to select the top vendors, who will be invited to pilot their system in our district. Some examples of these vendors are Discovery Streaming, CCC Video on Demand, and Safari. If you are interested in exploring more, Discovery Streaming allows users to create a 30 day evaluation account: www.discoveryeducation.com
We are currently in our evaluation phase. We have not yet selected the solution that we plan to pilot.
2. Will we be selecting just one provider? Will they have enough content to satisfy everyone?
Depending on what our committee recommends, we hope to be able to select one provider. We are open to the idea of more than one provider.We are excited to learn that we can purchase subject specific content through various companies and add that content to our video collection. We feel confident that we will be able to support various grades and subject matter with the ongoing, ever changing availability of digital content.
3. Can we import our own digital content (stills, video, sound files) into the system?
Yes. The system supports uploading our own district level content as well as teacher specific content. Copyright issues do come into play with some teacher content. We are in the process of learning these copyright details