NECC, 2006 California Streaming

California Streaming: A Golden Model for Rich Media Delivery!
Julie Drake, Central California Educational Technology Consortium with Laurie Maclin, John Magneson, Laura Smith and Steve Woods

California Streaming was my favorite session title at NECC. The session showcased a very exciting project – the creation of a statewide resource of streaming multi-media projects. Presently about 13 counties are participating in the project. Their website, http://californiastreaming.org/, offers California educators an opportunity to join and download lots of free resources but, some resources on the site require a fee. This sounds like unitedstreaming.com or other websites that provide media but there is an important difference here. Educators who are members of the group can upload their students’ projects or their own presentations. They hope that this participation by students and teachers will help them develop resources specifically focused on CA needs and standards.

California Streaming has set up an organized structure for searching viewing and sharing the work of students and teachers. The presenters pointed out that the projects on their site are great for learning and appeal to a variety of learning styles and are made by students.

California Streaming provides a safe environment for teachers to post digital media projects and to preserve and make available exemplary student projects. In effect, the more students and teachers contribute to the project the more they will have. This service is a non-commercial alternative for streaming and downloading multimedia.

Several student projects were showcased during the session and ideas about how teachers and students from across the state may collaborate on projects were also presented.

The model provided by this project should be used by other states to develop educational resources. Large and small school districts alike could also work together to share and develop classroom resources creating their own “wikipedia” of resources.