This week we moved to another important topic for online learning, learning resource storage and management. Multimedia resources are commonly used in online learning, and high-quality videos can easily take up a lot of space. When you have a lot of videos, you need to think about where to store them and how to provide access to others. In the past, I have used external hard drives, google drive, and youtube to store and share videos. It works when you want to store and share a small number of videos. In the class, we learned several new methods to manage media files.
Network Attached Storage (NAS) is something new for me. The large storage space, expansion options, automated data backup and protection, and remote access are very appealing. The setup and operation of a NAS device is not hard, and the interface is very similar to Bluehost. Although I do not have a need for large storage right now, I am happy to learn about this information in case I need to set up my own media server in the future.
PLEX is another option we can use to manage and share videos, providing access to your digital library anywhere and anytime from digital devices with the Plex app. Plex comes in two parts — a media server and client. You put your own video contents in a special folder on your computer, then direct the Plex software to this folder. And Plex makes your computer available as a server. By using the Plex app on another computer, or a mobile device, you can stream content from your computer to another platform of your choice.
I think PLEX could be useful for e-learning. There are a lot of excellent math learning videos over the internet. But it takes time to locate the one that is useful for you. I think it is a great idea to start building a collection of great math learning videos for different math topics to my Plex server and provide access to learners as extra learning resources.