View Science in A New Way With SciVee.tv

I have always been interested in Science. It is a wonderful topic and very important in the way you look at many things. Philip Bourne, professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of California San Diego, wondered how science was left behind. In his hopes to brings science back a bit closer to the cutting edge by combining user-generated video content with tagging and communities he has created a wonderful educational tool - SciVee.

In the constantly evolving and changing world of science, simple and swift access to information is key. In addition to Phillip Bourne, a group of scientists who felt that scientific distribution was in need of a transition from text to multimedia have collaborated and produced SciVee, an online social network where members of the scientific community can join forces to generate and revise articles, create personal profiles, and publish their work online.

“SciVee is about the free and widespread dissemination and comprehension of science.
SciVee, created for scientists, by scientists, moves science beyond the printed word and Lecture Theater taking advantage of the internet as a communication medium where scientists’ young and old have a place and a voice.”

You can also view a video of Phillip Bourne who gives an overview of the SciVee project.

The site revolves around the site’s upload feature, which lets all users post their articles and attach them with a video to create a “SciVee.” Others, modified as necessary, and then posted publicly to the network, can then review these “SciVee” videos.

Like most video-sharing sites these days, the entire operation revolves around a Flash player that provides instant gratification. What is interesting here is that SciVee breaks it down into two categories: one for standalone videos and another for what it calls a “pubcast” which lets you link up the video to a related research paper. Viewers can watch the video in the left hand corner of the screen while the paper scrolls to match what topic the narrator is talking about. There is also a simple table of contents on the left, which lets you jump to the video and text portion at the same time. It somewhat reminds me of my Spanish class videos in which words matched with videos and vice versa.

I think pubcast is a neat way to present a scientific concept, and offers users a chance to read, or watch science with some useful resources. I am a frequent visitor to a site called ScienceDaily and they feature videos, but not as educational as SciVee if that makes since.

With several partnerships with many prolific organizations including the National Science Foundation, SciVee is quite a success in its current beta stage and I feel it is a winner, as not only an educational tool, but also a magnificent way for scientist to learn from each other and transform text to media, which is what users want these days.