Drape's Takes

Building upon Wesley Fryer's list of tips and tricks for creating a successful Ustream broadcast, I thought it would be helpful to illustrate a few additional pointers. These pointers come after conducting over 30 hours of Open Professional Development and the realization that poor streams simply don't cut it anymore. Especially when doing it right can be so simple.


In order for a Ustream audience to get the most out of your presentation, you need to give them two things:

1. A quality audio feed. Unless you're actually showing them important information related to your presentation, there's a good chance they'll get just as much in listening to your presentation as they would in viewing your presentation. Besides, your remote audience is probably off playing Scrabble while you're presenting, anyway. Who are we trying to kid?
   
2. A good view of what you actually want them to see. In most cases, you probably want your remote audience to see the same thing you want your local audience to see (which is probably what you're displaying from your computer).

Remember: You're streaming for your remote audience - that portion of your audience that is not currently in the room with you. Because they can't see what you can, it's important to help them along the way.

The Ustream Presenter's Toolbox:

• A good microphone. Even thought it's a little pricey, I would highly recommend using the Blue Snowball USB Microphone. With both uni-directional and omni-directional settings, you just can't go wrong.
• CamTwist (Mac) or ManyCam (PC). Each of these free applications will allow you to serve your computer's desktop out as the webcam feed. Unfortunately, only CamTwist will also allow you to place your actual webcam image as a picture-in-picture.
• Mouseposé (Mac) or Mouselight (PC). These (used-to-be-free) applications place a spotlight around your mouse. Without the spotlight, it's nearly impossible to follow the presenter in a window that's only 320 x 240.
• An Alternate Browser. I've also found it very helpful to run the Ustream broadcast using a different browser than the one with which I will be demonstrating. During OpenPD, for example, I will teach using Firefox, but run Ustream with Safari. That way if/when Firefox gets overloaded and I need to restart it, I don't have to quit the Ustream broadcast.
  

Last night's Social Software in the Classroom open professional development class went as well as I had envisioned it could go from the beginning. To say that it went perfectly would probably be an understatement:

• Recording, transmission, and connecting went flawlessly.
• We opened with the first "show & tell" session that I know of that has included teachers from across the country. The topic: Bring your favorite Firefox plugin.
• We continued with a wonderful discussion about the in-class use of various exciting, online teaching tools.
• After a brief break, we were happy to interact with our first international guest speaker. Rachel Boyd (from New Zealand) was kind enough to explain to our class about a few of the experiences she's had in using blogging as an educational tool for her students. How many guest speakers from New Zealand have you brought into your class lately? +10pts to Rachel for her willingness to share.
  
• Finally, Rachel's discussion led perfectly into a discussion about blogging. We used Blogger as our tool of choice, simply because the participants already had Google accounts and the Blogger interface is relatively easy to use.
• In total, roughly 35 teachers from around the world participated in our class.
• It's been amazing to see how far we've come in 5 short weeks, and am glad that we were able to shine in this final session.
• None of this would have been possible without educational social networking! Classroom 2.0, EduBloggerWorld, FaceBook, and especially the Twitter network (my TwitterSchool) have been able to come together to make truly great things happen.
  

Again, the entire class was extremely refreshing, and I'm confident that everyone that participating walked away from the night having learned much.


Click here to view the video and audio recorded during the class to read about how we accomplished it all.

Technorati Tags: socialsoftware07 firefox blogosphere professional_development classroom20 edubloggerworld twitter ustream camtwist

Formal research conducted by serious researchers always consists of works (journal articles or other) that have been peer reviewed. The reason peer reviewed works are considered to be of higher quality than other works is because they "have been submitted to a process of evaluation by one or more experts in the subject to determine whether it is worthy of publication" (visit here for additional definitions).

Although many peer reviewed articles can be accessed using the Internet, the easiest way to tell whether or not an article is "peer reviewed" is by reading the journal from which it came. Many peer reviewed journals state in their introductions that they are, indeed, peer reviewed. Consequently, serious researchers spend considerable amounts of time in the library. In Utah, for example, a quick trip to the libraries at either BYU, the University of Utah, or Utah State University can be well worth the time as these libraries contain entire floors of peer reviewed journals.

Nevertheless, as not all students have access to the actual journals, the Internet can also prove to be an invaluable resource. Many libraries and an increasing number of other sources now offer online access to journals. Here are a few of my favorite starting places:

• Utah State University - Merrill Cazier Library
  
• Brigham Young University - Harold B. Lee Library
• University of Utah - J. Willard Marriott Library
  
• National University - Full Text Electronic Journal Index
• JSTOR - Online journal database
• Google Scholar - Journals, books, and abstracts

Another extremely valuable tool I've used when conducting research online is Google's new Notebook tool. Coupled with the Firefox plugin, this tool allows you to quickly save URLs and text from your favorite sites (just highlight some text, and click a button). You can then save your "notebooks" for others to view (click here to see the notebook I used to prepare for TTIX).

Image Source - Myself. This is a shot of one row of journals in the periodical section of the Harold B. Lee Library. If you've never been inside of a University library, you should stop what you're doing and visit one now! The size, the feelings, and the smells are all amazing (I love the smell - rarely changes from library to library).

Technorati Tags: research ttix07 national_university google firefox