SAFARI Montage is a broadcast-quality, plug & play, video-on-demand server for schools that comes preloaded with 1,000 of the best educational programs from the finest educational video publishers in the world. These publishers include PBS, WGBH of Boston, Scholastic, Weston Woods, BBC Worldwide, A&E Home Video, Disney Educational Productions, National Geographic, Sesame Street, Schlessinger Media and the list continues to grow. SAFARI Montage is affordable for every school, provides educators with a choice of content and is very different from other digital video solutions in the marketplace. What makes SAFARI Montage so different is choice of content – something that is made possible primarily due to SAFARI Montage’s unique lineage. SAFARI Montage stems from three well known, widely respected leaders in education, and the synergy that results is unmatched.

SAFARI Montage - Its Roots
The three leading companies that gave SAFARI Montage its roots are Library Video Company (LVC), Schlessinger Media and SAFARI Video Networks (SVN).

LVC was founded by Andrew Schlessinger 20 years ago, and it is the leading distributor of educational video to schools in the U.S and Canada. LVC currently distributes over 18,000 educational video titles from 600 suppliers through catalogs and the LibraryVideo.com web site.

Schlessinger Media is the publishing division of LVC, and it is the most prolific producer of award-winning educational programming for the K-8 curriculum in the areas of Language Arts, Math, Social Studies and Science, and provides outstanding educational programming for grades 9-12 as well. All Schlessinger Media programs are correlated to state standards and come with teacher’s guides. The programs are closed-captioned and are created with Spanish language tracks. The Schlessinger Media library is now segmented for digital use, but the full-length programs are produced at a classroom-appropriate 23 minutes. In addition to the originally produced programs, Schlessinger Media has also acquired exceptional programs, including an ESL series from Sesame Workshop, and co-produced David Macaulay’s The Way Things Work with Pearson. Also, major national educational companies have recognized the unique value that Schlessinger Media brings to the classroom. Leading publishers such as Prentice Hall, Houghton Mifflin and McDougal Littell have correlated Schlessinger programs to their distinguished textbooks.

SVN is the leading video networking solutions provider to schools in the U.S. SAFARI offers a whole suite of products, including video-on-demand servers, video conferencing products used for distance learning, professional development, school news and video security, video management tools that allow users to upload teacher’s lectures to the network, set-top boxes and more. SVN has also recently acquired eZedia, the premier, easy-to-use software tools for students and teachers in the creation of multimedia presentations.

Three Industries Converge

In February 2005, Library Video Company acquired SAFARI Video Networks. The talents of the leading K-12 distributor of educational video, the leading K-8 producer and the leading video networking solutions provider together produced SAFARI Montage, a broadcast-quality, plug & play video-on-demand server. This exciting new product represents the convergence of three industries, comes preloaded with 1,000 of the most highly regarded and sought after educational programs, and is affordable for every school at $2,495.

Choice Content

SAFARI Montage provides schools with digital access to their choice of educational video content, including preeminent educational series such as Scholastic’s Magic School Bus, Dear America and Royal Diaries; Weston Woods Studios’ Chrysanthemum, Miss Nelson Has a Field Day and The Mouse and the Motorcycle; the BBC’s Eyewitness and Walking With Dinosaurs; Disney Educational Productions’ Bill Nye the Science Guy and ABC News Classroom Edition; A&E’s History Channel and Biography; PBS’s Ken Burns’ The Civil War, Cyberchase and WGBH’s Arthur, NOVA, American Experience, Frontline and Between the Lions; and National Geographic’s distinguished library of programs.

Those are just a few of the publishers and programs in the K-8 core content package that comes preloaded on SAFARI Montage. There will be announcements about dozens of additional content providers in the coming weeks. In addition, this content will be indexed and correlated to state curriculum standards. The SAFARI Montage server will reside in the school media center or computer room, and it can be expanded to accommodate more programming and, ultimately, self-created content.

A Local Hero - An Alternative to Streaming

The programs on SAFARI Montage are segmented and fully searchable by segment so that teachers and students can access the specific clip they would like to show. The robust search engine helps educators create dynamic and engaging lessons. Playlists enable educators to string together segments from multiple programs into one sequence or montage and then create bookmarks for convenient playback. And, most importantly, the SAFARI Montage server avoids the problems associated with streaming, since a locally hosted server is a more reliable alternative to streaming video into schools over the web.

It’s more dependable because schools’ Internet connections are being taxed in a way that they have never been before. Schools are now using the web for many vital functions, including student management systems, online testing, research and other Internet resources. When a typical school with a T1 connection streams 256K video over the web, they are bottlenecking their network.

With as few as four concurrent streams on the T1, the network will become seriously degraded and incapable of functioning properly, and none of those other vital functions dependent on the web will work. This isn’t news to technology coordinators, who have regularly banned streaming during the school day, thus requiring overnight downloads of video. And of course, downloading presents its own set of problems, including management of copyright and storage capacity.

In comparison, SAFARI Montage will allow 55 educators to play a Halloween video simultaneously on Halloween as well as start and stop where and when they like so that the video can be shown in the most suitable way in each class. So, conceptually, bringing the video programs into the building on a school-based server is a better way to manage the enormous bandwidth considerations associated with video. And best of all, all of this can now be done simply and inexpensively with SAFARI Montage.

Buy the Box – Subscribe to the Content

The K-8 core content package includes 1,000 titles and is covered by an annual subscription, and a 9-12 package will also include 1,000 titles. For more information about SAFARI Montage, including technical specifications, server options and ordering details, visit SAFARIMontage.com.