Back on the Farm

What's new with the Animated Tutorial Sharing Project (ANTS)

Paul Betty – Regis University

Cassandra Kvenild – University of Wyoming

What is the ANimated Tutorial Sharing Project (ANTS)?

• Inter-institutional collaborative project

• A repository of shared online video tutorials

• A community of practice

• Lightweight and distributed

• A librarians best friend!

What is ANTS?

The Challenge

Goals of the ANTS project

• To create a critical mass of Open Source Tutorials for online resources used by libraries everywhere

• Rationalize Development of Learning Objects and thereby “Eliminate Duplication of Effort across Institutions”

• Make library related Learning Objects “Ubiquitously available” to online learners and thereby enhance librarians ability to reach out and educate online users where they are online.

• Provide developers with guidance and support so as to build up the number of potential contributors to the project.

• Develop sustainable practices that are flexible and independent of platform or specific technologies

How ANTS works

DSPACE

Submission Syndication Communication

Both sites offer RSS feeds and

embedding code!

Behind the scenes

DSPACE

ANTS team members

transfer .swf files to

Screencast.com

ANTS team members do conversion

ANTS team members upload to

hosting sites

ANTS team members post to Facebook

What’s new with ANTS? …

Project Wiki: discussion forums,

production tips, best practices,

inventory…

is ANTS primary broadcast channel now!

• More than 13 million hours of video uploaded videos during 2010 and 35 hours of video are uploaded every minute.

• The equivalent of 150,000+ full-length movies in theaters each week

• More video is uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than the 3 major US networks created in 60 years

• 70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US

• YouTube is localized in 25 countries across 43 languages

• YouTube's demographic is broad: 18-54 years old

• YouTube reached over 700 billion playbacks in 2010

Youtube.com (2011). Statistics. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/t/press_statistics on April 18, 2011.

What’s new with ANTS? …

What’s new with ANTS? …

Screencasting production software has moved to the cloud!

What’s new with ANTS? …

Principal Skinner: A half-ton of newspaper and all we get is 75 cents? That won't even cover the gas I used to go to the store to buy the twine to tie up the bundles. Hippie: It sounds like you're working for your car-r-r. Simplify-y, ma-an!

Why participate?

• Serve the Needs of Today’s Library Users

• Address needs of individuals with different Learning Styles

• Increase the visibility of libraries• Altruism: Help your Colleagues!• Work receives Attribution – even when

syndicated! (as per CC License)• Open Source = greater impact

(measurable via data at ANTS sites)• Join a community of practice and learn• Saves all of us time!

Sustainable practices

ANTS aims to be a sustainable Open Educational Repository (OER)

Modular

Adaptable

Interoperable

Discoverable

Accessible

Downes, Stephen. 2007. Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources. Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects. v 3, p. 41. Available Online: http://ijklo.org/Volume3/IJKLOv3p029-044Downes.pdf Retrieved: December 2008.

The future of ANTS

• Promoting the merits of collaborative library work

• Soliciting new team members for the “farm”

• Handheld and other mobile devices

• High Definition digital video on the Web and HTML5

• Increased visibility on high traffic sites: YouTube, iTunes, Facebook, etc.

• Soliciting funding, sponsorship, and institutional support