To capture and share the exciting news, events and educational enrichment that happens everyday on the NPS campus, ITACS has developed an online Video Portal, allowing students, faculty and the public access to dozens of NPS-related videos in one place.
“It’s like YouTube for NPS” explains site administrator Cullen Jones. The site launched officially on April 29 with over 100 videos, and more content is expected as the NPS community gets more familiar with the portal, and how they can use it.
The site has both a private and public side, allowing administrators to embed video on private group Web sites that are password protected. The public side provides footage of NPS news stories, events, graduation ceremonies, guest lecturers and off-campus footage relevant to different departments.
“For example, if a student wants to share his recent graduation ceremony with friends and family who couldn’t attend, the captured footage is available on the portal,“ said Jones. “The site offers an introduction to the Naval Postgraduate School, current events, conferences and guest lectures that have taken place at NPS throughout various departments and institutes. There’s a lot of great stuff on here,” he continued.
Videos on the portal can be accessed from on or off-campus, making it easier for students to catch up on the latest happenings at NPS or to watch a lecture they missed. The site also features monthly episodes of Inside NPS, a 30-minute show that appears regularly on the Pentagon Channel.
“Before the portal we were always managing our video by hand. When a new video request came in, we would have a link to it on the home page,” said site developer Todd Wyatt, “but once that event was over a couple weeks later, the link went away and there was never any kind of archiving of it.”
Now, footage is organized in categories and tagged based on the content. Visitors to the site can search through the quick tag links on the homepage, or search for videos by department or school within NPS. Upon selecting a video, the site also provides a handful of suggested related videos based on similar tags. The goal is to not only provide quick access to a video the user is looking for, but also to suggest other things happening on campus that may relate to the user’s interests.
The site also provides the option to subscribe to the RSS channel to receive regular updates when new content is added. The portal is now available at http://www.nps.edu/video/portal.