“Pay five cents. See the future.”

Today is the 110th birthday of a milestone in how people share information. On this day in 1905 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (and just across the Smithfield St bridge from our own PGH offices!), a singular marvel of its time was introduced: the nickelodeon movie theater.

Though not the first introduction Americans had to film, the introduction of the nickelodeon marked a shift in how film could be shared. The earliest films could previously only be watched one person at a time, on a device more like a viewfinder. The nickelodeon moved that to the silver screen, and in doing so, made the massive audiences we now associate with film possible.

Yet while the show was the feature, the true revolution was the cost. At five cents, the nickelodeon’s inexpensive admissions meant that one’s social class no longer dictated what information they had access to.

And what information it was. Nickelodeons most commonly ran several short films back to back as the daily feature, meaning that for the price of a ticket each audience member could see drama, comedy, arts, athletics, documentaries, news, and debate — all in one evening.

The nickelodeon business model would soon fall to the next generation of 1920s movie palaces, but by then their mark had been made. If video could be made widely available and inexpensive, it could reach an incredibly vast audience and provide an engaging way to share everything from fantasy stories to factual information.

Through the years, new technologies would take the lessons of the nickelodeon to new places. Today the internet has made video easier than ever for virtually any audience to consume — and modern video platforms like Panopto have made producing those videos just as easy. So while the papers in 1905 made have dazzled at the site of 450 people gathered together for a film, today that same medium can bring a message to millions.

This week we saw more and more people taking advantage of the power of video to share ideas, present information, and show how the world works. And in the spirit of passing it on, these are just a few of the ideas shared this week with Panopto’s video presentation software.

Engaging Communities in Combating Illegal Wildlife Trade
Join the University of Kent for this symposium exploring the roles of communities, governance, incentives and sustainable use in combating illegal wildlife trade. This symposium seeks to evaluate whether and under what circumstances community-based interventions are likely to achieve success in combating current patterns of illegal use and trade of wildlife (both plants and animals), and provide examples, lessons learned and guidance in order to support governments, institutions and organizations in meeting relevant international commitments.

Active Learning in the Law School Classroom: Tips and Technology to Help Create and Sustain It
From our own personal life experiences, we all know that hands-on learning is best. We can listen to someone explain to us how to hit a backhand, or use a function in Word or on our computer, or bake a cake, but it isn’t until we try it ourselves do we really understand how it is done and do we learn. Law is no exception — this presentation discusses strategies on how to bring hands-on, active learning to the law school classroom so that students are more engaged and responsible for their learning than in a traditional lecture classroom. Technology plays a vital role in active learning, and incorporating videos to create flipped classrooms and creating online classes will be discussed, and tips for successfully creating online videos and presentations for a flipped classroom will be shared. Examples of exercises that have been successfully used in a law school classroom will be presented, as well as advice for how to develop your own. The presentation will also discuss some of the challenges inherent in an active, experiential learning environment and share advice on how to overcome them.

Topic Modeling: A Swiss Army Knife for Faculty, Geeks, and Librarians
Unsupervised topic modeling is a sophisticated, machine-learning-based technique for extracting “aboutness” information from large collections of documents. That sounds scary, but it’s really something anyone can use — software packages such as Mallet make it possible for scholars, librarians, and other non-geeks to take advantage of what topic modeling offers, on their laptops, right out of the box. Popular with digital scholars in history and political science, topic modeling promises to be an important tool for legal scholarship.

Measures of Mortality
Join Dr Kathleen M. McTigue, Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, for this flipped classroom session looking into the various measures of mortality. Dr McTigue details the measurements that comprise the mortality rate, the standardized mortality ratio, case fatality rate, mortality tables, and other common measures, and helps students come to understand what makes each different and what makes each valuable for use in research and medical reporting.

Mind Mapping: A Tool for Clinical Professors in Training the 21st Century Attorney
Mind mapping is an analytical and organizational tool that clinical law faculty can use to improve student and client outcomes in a clinical setting. Characterized by visual representations of hierarchical information, mind maps usually take a central idea and surround it with connected branches of associated topics. Coupled with tactile electronic devices (like tablets and touch-screen computers), modern mind mapping software gives clinical faculty and students a new way to brainstorm, organize and process information, and to share the results with others in efficient, productive, and meaningful ways.

Try It For Yourself!

Panopto makes it easy for anyone, anywhere to record video presentations and share them online, both as live streaming webcasts and recorded on-demand video. To see how Panopto can help you share your ideas, contact our team for a free trial today.