A portable media player (PMP) is a consumer electronics device that is capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, documents, and videos. This small, pocket-sized media projector offers the highest quality while maintaining its light weight and hand-held portability without relying on the availability of electricity. The portable media player is powered by solar panels or hand-cranks that generate electricity to recharge the device's batteries.

It has the capability to store educational lessons that will provide teachers with more effective ways of teaching. Once the teachers have been taught how to use the equipment they will be ready to educate other teachers on the technology. The portable media player has the ability to teach education, farming, and health to rural areas in developing countries without electricity. This will help benefit and save the lives of underprivileged children, farmers, teachers, and women who are in need of important information that is currently unavailable to them.

The eight most effective uses for video in development:

1. Education

2. Health care

3. Agriculture

4. Civic Engagement

5. Entertainment

6. Awareness raising- When using a video for awareness raising, the video would focus on a specific issue. Some examples of issues are global warming, biodiversity, conservation agriculture, fair trade, human rights, and HIV/AIDS. The goal of the video is to create awareness about this issue among a particular audience. The audience might be a specific target group, such as farmers, or a geographically defined audience, such as a town or village, or it can be the general public. Video can contribute to people getting control over their lives by displaying individual power and the power positions of other people..

7. Advocacy- Videos can be an effective advocacy tool. They can record the point-of-view of overlooked or marginalized stakeholders and show them to decision-makers. This can encourage the inclusion of their stories, concerns and proposals in the decision-making process. Video also offers a way of documenting a process and compressing what could be a long story into a short film. Lastly, complex processes are personalized and producer are able to emphasize particular issues.

8. Data collection- More and more often students and researchers are using a camera to collect data. Combined with other qualitative data-collection techniques, video can be a powerful data collection tool.

One of the video techniques that works well for development is Participatory Video. More information on Participatory Video can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_video