Video.edu: User-Generated Scholarships

Here's the latest video news from the world of education.

Contest Awards Tuition for Most Popular Video
Taking a cue from brands like Heinz Ketchup and Doritos that have sponsored user generated video contests, one community college is putting almost a year's worth of tuition on the line. Indiana's Ivy Tech Community College is running the competition through August 1, asking future or current students to create a video explaining "Why Ivy Tech?" and upload it to YouTube . The video with the most views will be eligible to win a $3000 scholarship, with second and third prizes of $2000 and $1000, respectively.

To be eligible the video must address why the entrant wants to attend Ivy Tech or why the entrant deserves a scholarship. An entry form must also be completed. Winners will be announced August 15 and entries can be viewed on YouTube.

Educational IT Spending Predicted to Increase
According to one research firm there's a little good news on the horizon for IT spending in the education vertical. In a recent report, Gartner, Inc. predicts nearly $64 billion in education IT spending, an increase of 4.1% over  $61.5 billion spent in 2009. This rate keeps pace with overall IT spending across industries which is also forecast to grow by 4.1%. By comparison the overall IT market declined 6.8% in 2009, with education dropping 5.8%.

Gartner research director Kenneth Brant says, "national and international government will show the strongest growth in 2010, as IT spending is forecast to grow 6.2 percent worldwide." Education is the smallest vertical in the worldwide IT market expected to be worth $2.4 trillion.

It's a reasonable bet that this growth will extend to the online video industry given that streaming and digital media are typically part of an educational institution's overall IT buy.

What's News in Lecture Capture
Lecture capture is one of the most prevalent methods for producing educational video. Here's a brief round-up of news in the lecture capture sector.

• The New York Law School announced that it selected Sonic Foundry's Mediasite as its standard platform for lecture capture, streaming, and hosting. With the debut of a new building  in Manhattan's Tribeca district, the school deployed sixteen Mediasite Recorders for recording events and lectures in smart classrooms. Prior to the expansion the New York Law School had just one Mediasite, and now it has recorded over 3,000 presentations.


• Clickers and video are coming together in a strategic partnership between the lecture capture provider Panopto and the iclicker division of the publisher Macmillan. Clickers are interactive remote controls used in classrooms for students to respond to questions in class and are particularly popular in large lecture courses. Panopto and iclicker plan to jointly develop, market, and distribute a suite of digital learning products based on Panopto's lecture capture technology, originally developed at Carnegie Mellon University.


• Over 300 Michigan schools will receive $2.3 million in multimedia software from Michigan-based TechSmith Corp. through the company's Michigan K-12 Software Grant Program. More than 30,000 licenses will be awarded for TechSmith's screen capture and recording applications like Snagit and Camtasia, along with licenses for its Screencast.com content hosting service. One recipient is Michigan Center Public Schools, where superintendent David Tebo said Camtasia will be used to record lectures for students to watch at home so that they can use class time to complete assignments with assistance from teachers and fellow students.


• Lecture capture is also being put to use outside North America. Students and faculty at Qatar University (QU) can now view lectures and other video content using the Echo360 platform. The colleges of Pharmacy, Education, Business, Engineering, Foundation Program, and Office of Faculty and Instructional Development at the 8,000-student gulf emirate university are using the system to record lectures and workshops, which can be accessed through QU's Blackboard learning management system. The university found high rates of usage immediately following class meetings and in the days just before an exam.

Paul Riismandel's article first appeared on OnlineVideo.net