I’m at a meeting of local ed tech people today learning about VBrick. VBrick is a video distribution system that the Edina Public Schools purchased recently to replace their aging system of racks of VCRs. They passed a bond in their community that funded the system, including hundreds of LCD projectors in classrooms. They are in the process of converting their old analog video library now (at least the titles for which they could acquire the rights to do so) and only purchase titles that include video distribution rights now.
They bought Hitachi CP-X443 projectors that include four speakers instead of the standard one speaker. Apparently the sound from the projector is quite good and is loud enough to be heard throughout a classroom. If true, that’s a big improvement.
The VBrick management system is Web-based. Teachers visit a URL for the local VBrick server and can watch live TV or any video content that’s in the library. Media staff can schedule programs to be recorded which will then be available to all teachers. The sales guy says that they can integrate with other video streaming systems like United Streaming.
We continue to look at video streaming systems in my district, but we need to expand the availability of LCD projectors to make it work well. So far we’re buying projectors a few at a time which isn’t ideal, but it’s all we can do without a large source of funding to do a big project.