Lectures, Clips Put On Google Video Site

A page showcasing UC Berkeley lectures and events was added yesterday to Google Video, giving the public the opportunity to sit in on the campus's daily happenings.

The site includes six courses, totaling approximately 250 hours of footage, as well as university lectures on arts, science, and global affairs.

"We were interested in exploring our digital bridge and connecting those inside the campus with those outside the campus," said project manager Dan Mogulof, UC Berkeley's executive director of public affairs.

Google has been collaborating with UC Berkeley Public Affairs and Educational Technology Services since last summer, discussing new ways of making campus resources available to a wider audience, Mogulof said.

"We are both about leadership so we had a common language," he said. "We had many common values about making things available to the public."

In addition to the courses, the Google Video site includes the library's Lunch Poems Series and guest lectures through the Graduate School of Journalism and the College of Engineering.

The Google site will soon include sports clips, a feature not found on the current webcast system, said Obadiah Greenberg, product manager of UC Berkeley's webcast site.

The Flash technology used by Google Video requires no additional applications and plays immediately, Greenberg said.

This is better than the old system which required additional programs like RealPlayer, which would be downloading while accessing the content at the same time, leading to longer waits, he said.

The transfer of footage onto Google Video is labor-intensive, involving editing out all copyrighted materials from the tape, reformatting the clip for size and attaching a UC Berkeley logo, Greenberg said.

While the labor costs of adapting this technology are still unknown, Greenberg said the investment would bolster Berkeley's reputation as a leading educational and research institution.

"(Educational Technology Services) has made the investment because we want to explore this new distribution channel," he said.

Mogulof said there would be no changes to the current webcast offerings, which are more extensive on the campus webcast site than on Google Video.

"We would not do anything in this agreement that would hamper or have a negative impact on how students have access to multimedia tools," he said. "First and foremost, it's about serving the students."

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