I was looking for a short video clip for one of my classes when I stumbled across this link.
http://video.google.com/ucberkeley.html
It looks like Berkeley is using Google Video to post lectures from courses offered on campus. The production quality isn’t great, but it captures most of what is seen in a classroom. This particular effort involves at least one person running a video camera for the instructor. It looks like multiple channels are being captured for some of the lectures as the video of the presenter is switched with the presenter’s computer screen at different times.
Producing these would take a little work, but it’s nothing outside the capabilities of a technology student. In fact, this would be great experience for a teacher candidate interested in technology integration in the classroom. Digitizing video and editing that video into something that could be used online is a valuable skill. The downside to online video has always been the limit of bandwidth in a school district. Most districts have one T1 for several buildings. Adding video streaming to the normal traffic sometimes just doesn’t work well. But having a resource like Google Videos is great. At no cost to the school (money or bandwidth), the district can have video streaming of content created by teachers.
Now we just need to make sure the school’s filter doesn’t block Google Video.