A clever and obviously well funded high school in Price Hill, Ohio is demonstrating some clever innovation. According to The Price Hill Times (Elder's digital studio allows endless creativity), Elder High School is using a state-of-the-art production studio to produce and stream full news broadcasts including live sporting events via the school intranet:

PRICE HILL - ElderHigh School's new state-of-the-art digital production studio is allowing students to endlessly explore their creative capabilities.

This past summer a room in the SchaeperCenter was transformed into the studio, which doubles as a workspace and classroom complete with the latest digital production computer equipment.

"Our boys' creativity is unbounded," said Jerry Hamburg, Elder's technology director. "Anything they can think of, they can do right here in this studio.”

Students began using laptop computers last year to complete class projects and produce video broadcasts of sporting events and school activities for their Web site, www.elderhs.tv. But the new studio provides them with the resources to take learning to the next level, he said.

The room is stocked with two high definition camcorders, studio-quality lighting, a green screen, news anchor desk, several laptop and desktop computers, scanners and a high-powered computer with the newest digital production software, he said.

"We are the first school in the state to have high definition camcorders, we're exactly on the leading edge," Hamburg said. "We can replicate what any professional studio does.”

Elder students will use the studio when producing video for the Web site and creating broadcasts for the streaming Web cast on the school's Intranet, he said.

Students in the video club will also use the technology to make videos for their peers and community organizations, and students in courses such as history, film study and digital production will use it as an innovative approach to learning, he said.

"One of the great ways to learn is by doing hands-on projects and learning visually," he said.

Last year Elder students worked with the Price Hill Historical Society to make a video about Price Hill history, and this year students will make a documentary featuring the first-hand accounts of World War II from local war veterans.

Students can film a teacher conducting a science experiment, post it on the Intranet site and then other students can view it before class so they know exactly what they have to do, he said.

Hamburg said, "It is unbelievable what we can do here."

An interesting read yesterday in the Seattle Times on the evolution of search engines and how they are “redefining” our lives. It got me thinking about the horribly pathetic state of enterprise information retrieval at most companies.

First, some of the Internet stats quoted in the Times:

·     Google remains the top banana representing 47% of all searches; Yahoo! is runner-up with 23% of Internet’s search engine queries (Nielsen/NetRatings)

·     76% of users who have used a search engine; 56% use a search engine on any given day; 32% of users say they “can’t live without” search engines (comScore, Pew Internet & American Life Project)

·     3.9 billion queries on Google in August 2004 (comScore, Pew Internet & American Life Project)

Unfortunately, I was not able to find comparable data on enterprise intranet searches (I doubt it exists but I’d be grateful to any reader who posts a reply with any related data or study).

However, here’s what I did find on enterprise intranet search:

·     According to IDC and Delphi Group, the average knowledge worker spends about a quarter of his or her day looking for information (Google)

·     “An enterprise with 1,000 knowledge workers wastes $48,000 per week – $2.5 million per year – due to an inability to locate and retrieve information.” (IDC)

·     A Roper Starch Worldwide study (2000) found that on average, “Web-rage is uncaged after twelve minutes of fruitless searching, although about seven percent of the 566 people surveyed by say ire starts rising within three minutes” (ZDNet)

It’s worth noting that the number one complaint I hear about the corporate intranet at nearly every single client I’ve worked with (dozens) is “I can’t find anything.” Though I haven’t myself witnessed intranet ‘web-rage’ first hand....

Unfortunately it’s usually not the search engine’s fault; it’s the lack of system and/or execution of how web publishers categorize or save information (e.g. keywords, page titles, meta tags, etc.).

This may sound familiar if you read my article “The search isn't broken, we're broken.”