MyMedia

What is MyMedia?

MyMedia is a powerful video distribution platform powered by Kaltura for BU faculty, staff, and students. It includes its own easy-to-use lecture capture tool and is fully integrated into Blackboard Learn and Sakai. MyMedia is a a great platform for faculty to use to upload video content for students to access, or to encourage students to use in submitting multimedia assignments. It offers free captioning and tagging tools, and is a great alternative to YouTube or paid platforms such as Vimeo. To start using MyMedia, just go to mymedia.bu.edu and log in using your BU username and password.

Benefits of MyMedia

• Integration with Blackboard Learn and Sakai
• Unlimited storage
• Powerful keyword search
• Automated transcriptions, and
• Ability to serve as a private channel for BU faculty and students. The content you upload is behind BU’s login, so only you and your students can access it.

Helpful Tools

You can use the platform’s video creator, CaptureSpace, to create screen-capture videos for MyMedia. MyMedia has a lot of other helpful tools, such as capabilities to edit videos, as well as to add titles and add and edit captions. Content also lives on MyMedia permanently, so if an instructor uploads content for a course and then leaves BU, he or she can always contact the MyMedia platform administrator to retrieve their old video lectures. MyMedia can support 18 different video formats, 15 different audio formats, and 5 different document formats, so users rarely have to worry about converting files in order to upload them.

Convenience

Students access MyMedia through Blackboard (or Sakai, for Questrom classes). On Blackboard the student’s MyMedia link appears in the bottom right of the home screen below the list of classes. Students’ interfaces look the same in Blackboard and Sakai, and through that portal students can access, edit, and add content. MyMedia even includes a Mashup tool, which allows instructors to create an assignment thread. Students can upload videos to that thread, and even provide peer feedback to each others’ videos, making it an optimal platform for peer assessment.

BU’s MyMedia Use

BU’s MyMedia went live on October 1, 2016. Since October 2016 BU’s MyMedia users have uploaded over 2.7 Terabytes of content. Wendell Seale is EdTech’s MyMedia Platform Administrator, and he has trained members of BU faculty and staff in MyMedia.

Using MyMedia

One extremely important aspect of MyMedia is the use of tagging and descriptions. MyMedia builds an object-oriented database that does not use folders, which can take some time to adapt to. However if you tag the date, location, subject, and keywords significant to your video, you can always easily locate your content through a simple keyword search. This can make it even easier to locate content, as users no longer have to navigate through multiple folders to find older videos.

Getting Started

To access the platform go to mymedia.bu.edu and choose “Log In” from the pulldown menu in the upper right corner of the screen. You will be taken to the Kerberos screen to enter your BU username and password. You can also access MyMedia training videos on TechWeb. The Educational Technology team is available to all who are interested in learning about how MyMedia can contribute to learning or teaching at BU. For a consultation or information on MyMedia trainings reach out to EdTech through askedtech@bu.edu or fill out an IT Help ticket.

Technology Support for MyMedia

Connect with the Educational Technology team with questions or schedule a consultation at askedtech@bu.edu.

Teaching Guides & Resources

Email the Center for Teaching & Learning and schedule an appointment today ctl@bu.edu.