The loss of unitedstreaming

This past Friday (6/02/06) my inbox was busy as usual. I was receiving the normal office communiqué and a normal day’s worth of spam, when I came across the following message:

Dear Friends -

Over the past 24 hours, we have received numerous inquiries about New York Public Television's decision to terminate their long-term agreement with Discovery Education and what it means to your ability to continue to subscribe to unitedstreaming after June 30, 2006. In response, I've attached to this email a flyer that outlines subscription options that are available to you for the period beginning July 1.

Whoa! It looks as if United Streaming is moving towards becoming even more of a pay service. Sound the alarm!! This is a huge blow to school libraries and here’s why:

 

1. Going in reverse- Back in the 90’s and early 00’s, the school librarian was responsible for familiarizing themselves with state and local curriculum and selecting the appropriate media that best fit into units of instruction. When it came to purchasing VHS’ and DVD’s, it forced the librarian into having a ‘just in case’ collection, thus, creating a stockpile of tapes and discs with the hope that it was used more than once a year. The type of audio/visual materials a librarian could obtain was limited to what was in their collection and in their local Union Catalog, provided it wasn’t checked out. The advent of unitedstreaming and digital on demand video services allowed for the classroom teacher to select the materials that best matched up with their curriculum, allowing the school to share a collection of videos that were ‘just in time.’ If we lose unitedstreaming’s services we’ll likely be moving backwards towards the model of the early 90’s.
2. Media Budget- Every school library in NYS receives funding from their district and the state to purchase supplies and materials. School Libraries fight hard for the money that they receive, which most of the time is peanuts. Now the librarian will once again have to fit the most essential elements of the curriculum back into their shoestring budget. Talk about spreading it thin. BTW, have you seen the cost of performance rights for “educational” videos lately? With that price, I'd be able to afford around 10 videos with my '06-'07 A/V budget.
3. Tech Savvy Teachers- I touched on this a bit in #1 but I saw a difference in the attitudes of teachers and their willingness to adopt new technologies when they started showing digital on-demand videos on their LCD projectors. If teachers have the ability to easily show a video using a computer and a projector, all of a sudden modeling Internet searching, or creating and using a class blog isn’t such a big leap. Now, I’m not saying that the cancellation of Unitedstreaming will be the death of tech-savvy teachers, but the transition towards digital on-demand video usually was the segue for a teacher to become familiar with other forms of digital media.

I’ve just started to think about the impact this going to have on school libraries and the ripple effect it is going to cause. I hope its possible, that through negotiations, this service can be brought back for little or no cost. In my short time as a school librarian, I was starting to see all sorts of positive benefits from digital on-demand video services.

 

Maybe this blog entry will get New York Public Television and Discovery Education to kiss and make-up.

 

Image borrowed with permission from Zimpenfish's flickr photostream.