Ustream Experiment
January 17, 2008
Look what Ed has been up to…he streamed our TechCon meeting and recorded it on Ustream.tv. We are actually in a videoconference with about 15 people in the room with me and 7 remote sites. The remote sites don’t interact much. Most of them are actually working on other stuff while the meeting is going on! (Yes, Barbi, I am talking about YOU!)
The audio is surprisingly good. We need to work on the camera angle some…but that is just me being picky because we focus so much on camera angles with curriculum videoconferencing to make sure that the speakers are on camera and can be seen.
So…what does this mean for those of us that are committed to using room-based, H.323 systems? One thing I am thinking of is to create some training session using this. I know we can use the fancy-schmancy recording devices for videoconferences do a better job of capturing the speaker on the screen and the remote sites, but they are expensive. If you have worked with Shane and me, you know that we are on a limited budget and are always finding low-cost solutions.
Any other vc gurus out there tinkering with this type technology? Danny, Rebecca, Angela, Janine,…anyone? Anyone?
Posted in Supportive Technologies
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Well, I haven’t used ustream.tv but we use our vbrick all the time to stream events live. While I will argue that it can take away some audiences that would otherwise be interactive, it is perfect for things such as district wide training updates (gradebook, bus safety, MAC, etc) - we allow non-interactive sites to phone in their questions, administration to view district VC projects like Holiday Traditions and 100th day of school, and to allow newbie classes to view other classes participations in VCs.
This is cool. What kind of camera did he use to record the session?
Yes, I admit it, I was multi-tasking, and paying pretty good attention until I was distracted by the cutting-edge videoconferencing taking place in other rooms at ESC12 and Clifton Elementary. I do thank you for assisting me in my distraction. I think that my other son has a Weather With Rusty videoconference during our next techcon meeting!
As far as the webcam goes, you can use those little cameras with Windows Live Messenger and have an interactive mini-conference going on. We had a homebound student we were going to try that with so that he could participate in class, but he came back to school before the kinks were ironed out. It has a lot of possibilities at a minimal cost. My husband was home during the time I was figuring it out and I was able to see and hear him (and the TV in the living room) while I was sitting in my office. No holes in the firewall or anything were needed to set it up. I could not see the TV well enough to enjoy it, but it could have worked if I needed to catch up on the news or something else on TV.