digitalwriting

Watch PBS online? You can if you visit its new video portal - Los Angeles Times

Watch PBS online? You can if you visit its new video portal - Los Angeles Times.

Watch PBS online? You can if you visit its new video portal In allowing viewers to stream an array of its best-known shows, PBS is joining on-demand video sites like Hulu.com and YouTube -- places for younger consumers who aren't wedded to watching TV on a TV. By David Sarno April 22, 2009

The Public Broadcasting Service turns 40 this year, and on Tuesday it gave itself a gift that just might make it feel young again. PBS' new video portal allows online viewers to stream an array of its best-known shows over the Web. The new site gathers more than 130 episodes of nearly 20 programs, including marquee fare such as "Frontline," "Nova" and "Masterpiece Theater." PBS says thousands of hours of programming should be available to users by the summer.

In giving its shows away online, PBS is joining on-demand video sites such as Hulu.com and YouTube -- places for younger consumers who aren't wedded to watching TV on a television. Those two sites, both commercial, have been touting themselves as advertiser-friendly viewing destinations where video surfers can go to browse among a variety of familiar titles.

But on these sites, familiar can mean that you saw it decades earlier. Major media companies are still wary of posting their best material online, leaving YouTube and Hulu thin on the most popular shows but overgrown with cultural castoffs such as "The Lone Ranger," "Alf" and "Coolio's Rules." PBS' initial selection of about 20 programs is small compared with the pulpy catalogs maintained by the other sites, but full-length episodes of nearly every show in PBS' prime-time lineup have been put online.

In addition to acting as a clearinghouse for PBS content, the portal will function as the hub of a nationwide network of online affiliates, all of which can share programming through a single Web infrastructure, whose cost PBS would specify only as "in the seven figures." "I think this is really good of PBS," said Jackie Kain, senior vice president of new media at Los Angeles' KCET public television station. "We're all trying to create a local identity as it relates to a national identity," she said, referring to the way each station will create a unique mixture of original and borrowed content. "We're all part of a system."

Future Tense: Engaging kids with social media

Future Tense: Engaging kids with social media.

Engaging kids with social media MP3 - iTunes Minneapolis' Roosevelt High School teacher Delainia Haug has tapped the power of digital media to create a learning community -- called DigME -- in her school. Using a variety of digital media, students are studying and producing content across four separate subjects.

I know the idea of a digital carrot-and-stick to motivate students is not necessarily new. But what Cynthia Lewis at the University of Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development notes is that many students in this generation -- who we think are entirely comfortable with digital media -- often have few skills that they'll need, especially in college. In fact, this program seems to be showing the students that they can go to college.

 It's unclear what the impact of a digital media program is on increased student achievement; this is the first year of the program and there were no plans -- this year -- to study the effect on progress. But Lewis keeps an eye on what the kids are up to and if the fact they're updating their wiki pages late into the evening is any indication, motivation will translate into success.