Words You Can Use: The BAVC BLOG

by Matt Price, East Bay Manager, BUMP Beats (a program of Next Gen Programs at BAVC)

Middle School is a lot different now compared to when I attended 15 years ago. In many ways, the world has become much more accommodating to early teens. No longer is the joke about a teenager hogging the family phone all night applicable because today everyone has their own cell phone. Embarrassing notes are no longer confiscated and read by teachers because such top secret information can be passed over text messages, typed in a pocket, without even looking at the phone!

However, with all these modern conveniences come modern distractions. I teach middle school students how to make digital music on a computer using the software Reason. Since we are on computers about 75% of the time, the Internet is a constant distraction. In my first year teaching the class, I fought the use of the Internet and turned it off while the students were doing their lessons. This year, it wasn’t so easy since I couldn’t just pull out an ethernet cable like I could in my old classroom. This lead to daily battles for students’ attention between lessons on how to make drum beats and the newest online games. At some point, I had enough. I would never win a fight against the Internet. Instead, I decided to embrace the Internet and put the lessons online on a blog. This way the students would get the satisfaction of being on the Internet, but also keep focused on their daily lessons. I took it a step further and working with middle schoolers’ natural social tendencies, I asked each student to create their own blog so that they could have a place to post their songs, thoughts and interests. Right now I am in the middle of the second class in which I’ve incorporated personal blogs and so far, I like the results. The underlining goal of my classes is to improve the computer literacy of the students and the blog has been an excellent way to meet this objective.

You can check out the lessons online at bumpccpa.blogspot.com or ccpabeats.blogspot.com.

By Carl Weichert, BAVC Training and Education Strategist

Adobe launched version 1.0 of its iTunes-style Adobe Media Player (AMP) this past Wednesday. AMP is an Air-based application that plays Flash video, either by streaming from the host site or by downloading the video. AMP checks for new episodes of user favorites and downloads them for later offline viewing.

For content providers, AMP offers a lot of control, using the Adobe Digital Rights Management Server. The videos online now are all advertisement-supported, but Adobe plans to add more options, such as paying to rent a video.

How does AMP compare to some of its competitors? In terms of picture quality, AMP delivers really good-looking HD video, and does it quickly. The only other online video service I’ve seen with comparable quality is Hulu. It definitely beats out Joost and some of the other sites I watch video on. In terms of content, it’s definitely lacking compared to other options – Joost and Hulu both have much more, and more varied, content. AMP has partnered with PBS, MTV, CBS, and other content providers to beef up their catalog, but right now, I’d say their strongest offering is Adobe TV, Adobe’s channel of instructional videos. (more…)