online video guide

Current TV just launched an online “Survival Guide” for its citizen-viewer-contributors, with comprehensive video HOWTOs on journalistic technique, storytelling — even how to shoot, edit, compress, and choose the gear you’ll need to roll-your-own DIY TV.

This would be very useful as a school media resource

Current TV is a great concept for those (americans) frustrated by available TV. It’s a US national cable and satellite channel dedicated to viewer-created content, or VC2 (hence the survival guide). At present VC2 makes up about a third of the channel.

Their program is divided into short segments -”pods” - each a few minutes long. To quote “You’ll see profiles of interesting people on the rise, intelligence on trends as they spring up around us, and international news from new perspectives. And much of it comes straight from you. Anyone who wants to contribute can upload a video. Then, everyone in the Current online community votes for what should be on TV. You can join in at either stage — watch & vote or create & upload”. Would work well here too….