The Dunkirk City School District has added a new "Video on Demand" component to the district and site hompages.  The videos are created within the district, posted to a third party site such as YouTube or Vimeo, and then embedded directly on the homepage.

 

The high school Media Productions and TV club help to film and edit all videos. Students also film and star in the videos as well.  William Smock (webmaster) commented that "filming is a fun project that can pretty much fit into any curriculum and it's a great way of showing the community what happens within the classroom." 

 

William made the following comment when asked if they are receiving positive feedback from people that are visiting their website:  "We have received a lot of positive feedback and this section has sparked some of our buildings to become more tech savvy to create videos. Character education is huge right now and creating videos to post help to satisfy requirements for state mandates, so it makes a project like that twofold."  His experience using both You Tube and Vimeo has been positive.  The District plans to continue to use these websites and would like to experiment with other third party websites in the future. 

 

Using third party hosting websites, like those mentioned above, is becoming a popular trend and a best practice.  Third party hosting sites can help alleviate issues that are commonly encountered when videos are hosted on the school website.  They are designed to stream video, so the quality, speed, performance, and viewing compatibility is optimal.  Also, since the video is stored on other servers, a districts valuable storage will not be consumed by the multi-media needs of the district.  The district can surface the video by linking directly to the video hosting website or by embedding the player on a page within the district site.

 

 

This is a video embedded on their Middle School homepage from Vimeo.  http://www.dunkirkcsd.org/Domain/341