All I can say is WOW! Ustream.tv could arguably be the favorite web 2.0 tool of the new millennium. Over the last week or so, I have seen Will Richardson start his new Weblogg-ed TV show, beginning in a sports bar with David Jakes and Steve Dembo chatting and demo'ing (and lamenting their beloved Cubbies) how simple and inexpensive it is to set up a live studio. And just tonight, Will has another episode that centered on some of the very cool things you could do using a free program (albeit just for Macs) called Cam Twist.
Just think of the possibilities of Ustream. For instance, our school has been toying with the idea of setting up a daily video newscast that can be broadcast live to every classroom. In the old days (B.U. - Before Ustream), we would have to run a bunch of coax cable to each classroom, install TV's, and basically set up a small cable TV operation. It's a great system that doesn't rely on Internet bandwidth to work. But how expensive would this be for a school with no such infrastructure in place? I'll tell you, it ain't cheap!
Now that Ustream is in the here, the now, and the free, the obstacles seem MUCH smaller. Will showed very eloquently tonight how simple it would be to set up a school TV broadcast center using a computer, one or two web cams or digital video cameras, a microphone, and that cool Cam Twist program. I plan on starting a broadcast club much sooner than I anticipated (2 years early) as a result. The technology is simple enough to where the students could run the show pretty much by themselves. How's that for motivated and student-centered learning? The one issue that still is gnawing at me is having 30 plus classrooms tuning in live to our Ustream broadcast, all within the same network sharing a T1 line. I'll be curious at what point the network cries Uncle when so many people are trying to stream video at the same time.
And professional development? Now we can tune in live to workshops and conferences very easily. Although I didn't personally see it, I noticed that Vicki Davis was Ustreaming some workshops she is attending this week. I'm sure that as more folks start using Ustream, the world will become so flat that it will start bending in the middle with all the personal learning that is and will inevitably take place.
I plan on attending the Tech Forum in Austin on November 2. Wesley Fryer, David Jakes, and several other heavy hitters will be presenting. Will they Ustream their sessions? I hope so. I'll even volunteer to do it for them if they'll let me. As wonderful as it is to Skypecast or live blog a workshop to generate a back channel of communication and feedback, we are a visual society. We like to see what's going on to better understand the context of what we're learning. I guess that's why Second Life seems so popular right now.
As I'm writing this blog entry (the few and very far between), I keep thinking about how to aggregate ed tech shows that will be popping up all over the place very soon (my prediction). Could we push for a common tag that could be used to advertise when these shows will be broadcast? Twitter is great for this but is sometimes too immediate and by the time I see it, the event is over..I'm a day late and a dollar short. If show producers blog-ertize (blog + advertise) their shows and use a common tag (say edtechbroadcast or edtechustream or something else?), we could subscribe to that tag and have an RSS enabled schedule of events. Any other thought on this idea?
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
I Stream, You Stream, We All Stream for Ustream!
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1 comments:
I agree, John. There’s got to be a way to aggregate the shows being streamed out there – by tag or other. Steve Dembo, however, has created a great starter page. He’s called it Edtech TV. Funny thing, though, is that even with so many channels, quite often it’s still hard to find something on.
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