>
> For me Google Apps is even more compelling because Google
> just announced
> video sharing capabilities in the education edition.
> Apparently, it will
> cost $10 per user, but I think that's reasonable
> considering there seems not
> to be any great solutions to storing video for schools.
>
Of course, "great" is highly subjective -- given Google's reliance on personal data as part of their revenue stream, a very compelling argument can be made that requiring students to use google (ie, requiring students to have their usage habits analyzed as part of an unpaid marketing study) isn't so great.
As to other options:
Purchase a server capable of serving video for a school: 3000.00
Install and configure ffmpeg, an open source video encoder: 10 hours.
Install and configure Drupal with either the media mover or the flashvideo modules: 30 hours for a basic install, 60 with a learning curve. In a school setting, it makes a lot of sense to have students be a central parr of this work.
Additional tweaking (not necessary, but the kind of experimenting/refinement that usually happens): 50 hours (ballpark), spread over weeks among individuals.
Server and web site maintenance: 5 hrs/month
So, for 3k, an initial time investment of 40 to 70 person hours (ie, this could be split among a group), and a small amount of monthly maintenance, a school could create its own youtube clone. This site would be entirely under the school's control, and would not subject minors to the data mining which is a clearly stated "cost" of google services. Additionally, within the school, building this project could be covered as part of the curriculum.
For a school of 300 students, this system is competitively priced to what Google offers -- I don't know if that 10/user number is per month or per year, but assuming its per year a school of 300 students would pay Google 3k, or the cost of the server. After 1 year, the open source solution begins to save money, on top of it's privacy and educational benefits. And please, any and all systems experience downtime, even if they're run by Google: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/17/google-app-engine-goes-down-and-stays-down/
Drupal is available at http://drupal.org; the Media Mover module is available at http://drupal.org/project/media_mover; FlashVideo is available at http://drupal.org/project/flashvideo
Cheers,
Bill
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