The United States federal government has produced many kinds of information. It is paid for by the tax dollars of the citizens, and was traditionally available from sources like the Superintendent of Documents at the Government Printing Office. That operation still exists, but there are now many more ways to get information, including public domain releases of video.

Video production by students and school personnel is well within budget these days. Many schools even have video production classes that feature student recorded work. Some schools produce daily or weekly video news programs.

There are many non linear editing systems available that run on today’s computers. Adobe Premier is well known for the Windows world. Final Cut Pro is a hit on the Macintosh. But these are very expensive. You can do good work for less.

What about Free or Open Source video editing?
Start at Wikipedia’s list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_editing_software

Look near the bottom of the list. There’s a whole bunch of open source programs for Windows, Macintosh and Linux.

Now, back to the federal resources. Much of the video from the federal government is stored in the form of video tape and film, so Public.Resource.Org has stepped up to make the conversion of this video into digital format which we can access through the Internet.

Watch FedFlix

*No late charges* in the public domain!

FedFlix is a joint venture with the National Technical Information Service (NTIS). Each month they send us government videotapes. We upload them to the Internet Archive and YouTube, then send the government back their videotapes and a digital copy for their files. No cost to them, more data for all of us. Enjoy!

http://public.resource.org/ntis.gov/

With this resource, you and your students can produce video projects that pop and can do any remix you want…That’s the joy of public domain.

What similar resources do you use?

The meeting information has gone to MassCUE to be included in the December Calendar mailing.

Moving to Open Source Software in Schools (MOSS SIG)
Date: Monday, December 14, 2009
Time: 9:00 A.M.
Location: Fowler Middle School, 3 Tiger Drive, Maynard, MA
Check in at the main office as a visitor. There will be signs posted to the room where the meeting will be held.

Directions: http://www.maynardschools.org/directions.html
MapQuest: http://bit.ly/7Wb5q5 (shortened with bitly.com)

This meeting is intended to be a “roadmap” meeting, trying to get a clear picture of the steps that the SIG can take to make itself useful to schools, technology coordinators, and teachers and ultimately improve students’ access to open source tools which will improve their chances to succeed.

In addition, we want to provide access for those who cannot be physically present. We are working on the details this coming week. Look for more information in a later blog post.