I spent yesterday afternoon learning more about ClickView- the powerful video resource add-on to ‘The Loop’.

Last year I had the opportunity to participate in an afternoon session of a similar ilk but it didn’t mean much as we didn’t have access to The Loop at that stage. This time round it was powerful in lots of ways as we now have access to the power of The Loop.

ClickView gives us access to a huge library of video on demand that you can stream, use as a focus for lessons and edit & embed into your presentations for children or give to children in a Keynote or Powerpoint for viewing at home via a flashdrive.

For users of Clickview here is a pdf tutorial that is hot off the press but you can also access on line video tutorials here. Reproduced here with ClickView’s permission. I would love to show you a video from TVNZ showing children using the Loop this year but copyright forbids me to publish but holy wacamole- it came out of the cloud with lightening speed. (20,000 times faster than typical broadband for the technically specific types!!!!)

For the uninitiated here is an idea of what The Loop is all about…

1. By pooling resources and expertise we’re building a technical framework way beyond what an individual school can achieve or maintain. This collaboration creates economies of scale, aggregated demand and serious negotiating power which has seen the Loop secure unbelievably fast, high quality connectivity at a very reasonable, fixed cost.

2. This has been the most amazing collaboration between the whole gambit of interested parties. We have managed to get a disparate swath around the table proving that working together can be a win-win situation – a ‘virtuous’ rather than vicious cycle.

3. The development of the Loop is a perfect example of ‘new knowledge’ in action. No one person knew how to build this type of network and there were no models to follow. So, we assembled an most amazingly eclectic group of expertise who set about ‘nutting it all out’.

4. There has been much talk of community networks (MUSH’s) and, when the Minister of Economic Development launched the Digital Cities strategy, the Loop was paraded as one of the “heroes”. Today we are still the only MUSH-type network fully operational.

5. The Loop is ground-up, shaped by its users and so teacher/learning focussed. Furthermore, this local ownership has proven incredibly empowering. The Loop users are ‘prosumers’ (proactive consumers) shaping ‘their’ product.

6. Tomorrows Schools has tended to promote competition not collaboration. This project turns that on its head. We are proving that collaboration is the way forward – by sharing expertise… sharing resources…. helping each other … mitigating risk we are all enjoying the many benefits now accruing.

7. We are working with other potential loops in a loose federation (‘Superloop’) to solve national issues around how these aggregations can collaborate as a larger entity. This is laying the basis for a proposed National Education Network.

8. Looking at the big picture – the Loop is a perfect example of the guiding principles of wikinomics (openness, peering, sharing and acting globally) – using mass collaboration/peer production to achieve a successful outcome.

9. Our peers judged us to be a worthy winner of the Computerworld “Excellence in the use of ICT in Education” for 2007.

Borrowed from The Loop Portal