Hi Doug,
Just getting back to you with a preliminary report on what we need to
set up the multimedia suite in the library.
Firstly I looked at cameras and other hardware that students will be borrowing.
As you know we're dealing with about 600 students on this site. In addition,
there have been 6 tutors who have already been asking about digital cameras
and digital video cameras, and they hadn't even heard about this project.
Judging by the interest I don't think we should buy less than 4 of each,
that way we can let a class take three at a time and still have one left
over. We'll also need to ensure that the cameras are only lent out for
a day at a time. I'm going to try to get some advice from other colleges
about equipment which is both rugged and reliable enough to be borrowed
by our students. We'll probably need to get a mini disc recorder as well,
so students can record high quality sound.
The second area I looked at was the computer hardware we need.
Obviously, as we'll be dealing with video, image and audio files, we'll
need as fast a processor as we can get, Mac or PC. We'll also need at
least 512MB of RAM, but 1GB would actually be much better. For capturing
video we'll need a 10,000 rpm hard drive as well, they're much faster
than the old 7,200 rpm drives. They also need to be as large as we can
afford. If we can get a deal it is probably better to get Macs, even if
it'll take a little while for everyone to get used to them. I suppose
that depends upon our preferred suppliers though. With a discount we should
be able to get at least 3 workstations.
Finally we need to consider software.
We need to have a full range of media software, from print to video on
at least one computer, preferably all three. It would be great if students
had the opportunity to use whatever media was best for their particular
project. I think it could be very interesting to help them use the internet
as a vehicle for their opinions, and for demonstrating their skills.
So that's it for now. We're really looking at a budget of £8,000
for the hardware. We'll have to look at the licenses we already have for
software to see if we'll need to spend much on that.
I'll get back to you when I have more info on the cameras.
Cheers
Charlie
![]() |
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
This site created
by
Charlie Williams M.A.
Claire Weetman M.Ed.
23rd June 2003
updated 01/01/05