Are
you keeping on top of the latest online video broadcasting? These New
Web technologies make it easy to use and accessible to every school
district.
Online Videoconferencing
Web tools such as uStream make video broadcasting accessible.
A
K12 planning survey I reviewed several years ago indicated that
videoconferencing was a top technology application of interest. At the
time, the cost of equipment and the need for broadcast studios were
major obstacles, so few districts participated in videoconferencing.
All this has now changed, thanks to Web technologies that make
broadcasting video easy to use and accessible to every school district.
Best of all, the tools are free.
The following information
includes overviews of the major online video technologies used in
schools, examples of district applications, and places where you can
get additional information. These emerging tools have implications for
administration, public relations, communications, collaboration,
teaching and learning throughout your school system.
uStream
I became a fan of uStream
videoconferencing last November when a colleague asked if he could
"uStream" the professional conference keynote discussion I was about to
have with DA columnist Will Richardson.
My colleague pointed the Webcam
attached to his laptop at the stage, "Twittered" to a network of
friends that he was about to broadcast the presentation (see sidebar),
accessed the uStream Web site and clicked the "Broadcast Now" button.
As a result, numerous people across the country stopped what they were
doing to watch the broadcast and used uStream's built-in chat feature
to discuss what was happening, which produced 22 pages of text. You can
see K12-related uStream examples, including Richardson's recent Web 2.0
presentation to deputy state education superintendents, on the
Weblogg-ed TV site listed below.
uStream differs from previous
implementations of Web broadcasting in numerous ways. No special
hardware, software or recording studios are required, since any Web
camera and high-speed Internetlinked computer can broadcast the video.
And if you only need sound, you can transmit the audio alone. It's
built-in chat feature allows participants to discuss presentations as
they are happening, and since broadcasts are automatically archived,
countless numbers of viewers can access programs long after they have
ended.
For
example, Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy (SLA), a public high
school, uses uStream to record class discussions and presentations for
later review by others, and to connect absent students to classes they
would otherwise miss. SLA also hosted the recent professional
conference Educon 2.0, and broadcast every presentation through
uStream. While 250 people attended the conference physically, more than
1,000 participated virtually. Students were also assigned to monitor
each live chat, so questions could be shared with people at the live
event.
SLA's principal Chris Lehmann
says, "Our classes have interacted with students and teachers from all
over the globe. We've broadcast original student productions, and we've
been able to work with people who otherwise would have no access to the
Science Leadership Academy. This technology has given students insight
into the lives of others away from Philadelphia, and meant that they
could share their work globally."
Twitter: Instant Videoconference Alerts Although
not a videoconferencing application, Twitter is invaluable in alerting
viewers to an impending videoconference. Twitter kicks the concept of
instant messaging up a notch by allowing you to message hundreds or
thousands of people at a time. You invite people to "follow" you, and
you may be a "follower" of other people to form a social circle. Then
when you "tweet" a message, all the followers receive it at the same
time. Users may "Twitter" via cell phones, e-mail or Web browsers,
since communication is limited to text and messages no longer than 140
characters. However, one can get amazingly good at communicating within
such constraints. While the intent of Twitter was to "microblog"
announcements of even inane activities, such as "I'm eating a
sandwich," educators have found it to be a quick and easy way to
maintain professional communities. Twitter is great for asking
professional questions and meeting up at conferences, such as, "Anyone
who wants to discuss Web 2.0 applications should meet in the hotel
lobby at 5 p.m." For example, at the Educon 2.0 conference, I read a
"tweet" from education consultant David Warlick exclaiming that a
particular presenter was fantastic, which led me to leave one session
and move to the presentation he recommended.
In New York,
Brian C. Smith, instructional technology specialist of the Monroe #1
BOCES, described a science curriculum application of uStream that
broadcasted and archived a student-led Pond Partners Project
presentation on local water quality. The chat feature also enabled
viewers to submit questions to the students during the live
presentation.
Smith explains that Web-based
video tools, like uStream, lower the bar to videoconferencing viability
for classroom teachers. "Educators shy away from video because of the
time involved in editing and producing," he said. "uStream conserves
that time, and the archive provides an opportunity to extend the
learning experience." Similarly, in Colorado, Karl Fisch, director of
technology at Arapahoe High School in the Littleton Public Schools,
says that his district uses uStream to support author discussions and
for district educators to share expertise with colleagues in other
schools.
Skype & iChat
Skype and iChat technology
lets you make free telephone calls from any computer to any number of
computers. Skype also offers a paid option where you can call regular
phones via Skype or vice versa. In addition, Skype and iChat allow you
to initiate videoconferences among multiple users via your computer and
net connection, and iChat allows users to share video, slides and
presentations. There are also ways to record and archive Skype or iChat
conversations, which allow educators to post the files on district Web
sites and podcast them for future listening and viewing. Skype is a
cross-platform technology, while iChat is Mac only.