Camtwist for face time3/19/2023 Don’t get me wrong, these systems were and are VERY sophisticated, and can require virtually ZERO instructor / professor technical saavy and intervention to work. I don’t know what current quotes are, but about a year ago when I was helping some educators at UCO evaluate lecturecasting solutions offered by some vendors, they were wanting $10,000 PER CLASSROOM to support lecturecasts. Here’s the problem with scaled lecturecasting for instructors as well as institutions: It can cost a LOT of money to purchase and support lecturecasting solutions. MIT Open Courseware probably sets the bar for the OCW (open courseware) movement, but there are a growing number of other institutions also getting on board. The amount of content available in Apple’s iTunes U is amazing, and I know it’s just going to grow in the years ahead. Boredom can be present with or without technology. It should have been something like, “Dean Exhorts Faculty to Stop Technology Abuse.” It takes a good teacher with good learning strategies to evict boredom from a classroom. After all, we need to start treating digital storage as abundant, right?! We also need to keep in mind the point made SMU Art Dean Jose Bowen: Professors and instructors MUST STOP PowerPointing students to death! He was quoted in a Chronicle of Higher Education article last year originally published with the headline, “‘Teach Naked’ Effort Strips Computers From Classrooms,” and later changed to, “ When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom.” IMHO, that was a terrible headline re-write. If it’s worth sharing face-to-face, it’s worth recording. I think every college lecture should be recorded and made publicly available. Codian has since been purchased by Tandberg, and their amazingly responsive technologies are now integrated into Tandberg products. My June 2006 post, “ Kudos for Codian,” gives some additional background about those technologies. During that time, we went from using virus-prone Windows95-based videoconferencing systems to H.323 videoconferencing units interfaced to a state-of-the-art Codian IP VCR. When I served as the director of distance learning for the College of Education at Texas Tech University from 2001 – 2006, I was amazed to see the improvements in videoconferencing and web streaming which took place in the industry. (Many thanks to Echo360 for most of those articles and studies.) I considered focusing my dissertation on the use of commercial lecturecasting solutions, and still have some articles and resources relating to lecurecasting available on a personal, self-hosted wiki I setup with Tikiwiki awhile back. I have been using webcasting tools like Ustream for the past couple of years, and shared the presentation “ Webcasting on a Shoestring” at our Oklahoma Distance Learning Association‘s conference a year ago to document some of my lessons learned to date. (Wifi or 3G connectivity is best for this type of mobile web streaming.) All for $8 per month! Gloriously, that website auto-detects if visitors are using a mobile browser like Safari on an iPhone or iPod Touch, and will serve up compatible H.264 QuickTime video to view on the go without any syncing to iTunes required. ![]() Our week 1 lecturecast is now available on our T4T Scribe blog, and future episodes are set to auto-post there from. □ In this post, I’ll describe some of my personal history and knowledge of lecturecasting systems, and detail how I’m using my MacBook Pro laptop, free software and websites, and an $8 per month PRO account on to accomplish the aforementioned goals for T4T this term. It also needs to be cheap, since I’m self-funding this with my generous adjunct faculty salary. Since I am my own tech support for this lecturecasting process, I need to make it as easy and streamlined as possible. I’d love to be an early adopter and share my videos there! Perhaps that could help my chances of securing full-time employment as a professor with UCO down the road? I’m sure that would also depend on whether my course videos are actually GOOD! □ The University has a little content there from the September 30th Creativity Forum event, but not any course videos YET. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to, but I am going to also pursue the possibility of publishing my course videos on UCO’s iTunes U portal. I also want to make it available as an iPhone-compatible video in an updated web feed. ![]() I want to record at least one of my two repeated lectures each week, and make that video file available online for my students as a flash-based video. This semester I am teaching two sections of a 15 week course at the University of Central Oklahoma called, “ Technology 4 Teachers.” This is a required course for all UCO College of Education undergraduates which meets once per week, for two hours.
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