I’ve been messing around with a live webcasting service called BlogTV. Two nights ago I went live for the first time.
I sent out a message on Twitter about 15 minutes before starting, and I was astonished to see that around a dozen people came along. It was very kind of them because there wasn’t an awful lot in it for them: this was an experiment, after all, and it took me about 20 minutes to realise that you can allow guests to speak, for example.
I am afraid that I don't know everyone who turned up, but thanks to all, especially Lisa Durff for helpful comments. Vicki Davis turned up (I saw her online in Skype and invited her to join us), and immediately set about doing two things.
First, she broadcast to her own Twitter network that this was going on. I had to ask her to cease and desist! After all, this was only an experiment!
Second, once in the room, she devoted all her comments to an advertisement that had appeared on her screen showing bikini-clad young women. I will return to this shortly.
Other people who turned up include Shelly Terrell, Suzie Nestico, Jerry Green, and Anne Hodgson. Sorry for leaving some people out - it means I can't find them online.
Everyone was immensely helpful, being willing to act as co-hosts (thanks to Johnny and Jerry, and also Shelly for volunteering). Also, John McClear, and John Cuthell both turned up. John couldn’t get connected properly at the time, but we had a great conversation via Skype this evening and he came up with a couple of great thoughts.
From my brief foray into the world of Blog TV, I suggest there are the following advantages and disadvantages:
Advantages
- It is ridiculously easy to get up and running. I tried Mogulus a couple of years ago (I think it is now Livestream), and it seemed far too highly specified for my needs. I have no desire to become a one-man TV studio.
- It’s easy to get the hang of. As you will see if you look at the couple of videos I recorded of the live broadcasting session, within about 20 minutes I’d learnt quite a bit.
- It is inexpensive.
- I thought at first this was a disadvantage, but both John Cuthell and my wife have pointed out the error of my thinking. The recordings are limited to 10 minutes in length. That is actually very good: a 10 minute to talk about or have a discussion about a topic keeps one focused. It also makes for less editing, which is extremely time-consuming, and smaller files, not to mention less searching for the bit you want to see.
- It’s easy to set up quick polls.
- You can announce your show on Twitter (I think) and via email. Bizarrely, I already have about a dozen subscriubers! Very nice of them, although I have no idea who they are yet.
Disadvantages
- Well, a big disadvantage has to be the sort of ads that pop up. I haven’t seen the bikini-clad girl that Vicki referred to, but another one insists on being shown in which there is a lady whose sole purpose in life appears to be to display her cleavage. For this reason and the next, I would not use this with students, but only as a professional development tool for teachers.
- As far as I can see, Blog TV is populated by teenagers (mostly girls), and older men with pony tails playing music (I mean the men were playing music, not their pony tails). There isn’t even an educational channel as such. I wondered aloud if people would regard this environment in such a way as to not take seriously any attempt at using this medium for professional development. However, everyone who has responded said "No", and as John Cuthell pointed out to me, you can simply use Blog TV as a convenient medium for generating the videos and then putting them somewhere else, like YouTube.
- I've tried co-hosting a couple of times, but it seems to use up so much bandwidth that it makes the idea of having a 2-way conversation like that completely untenable: there seems to be a 10 to 20 second delay between one host speaking the other one hearing him/her. I am not yet sure why this problem arose.
At some point, I will be undertaking a few more practice sessions, apart from the one mentioned below. If you would like to know when that will be, just get in touch (you can send me a message on Twitter if you prefer).
This evening (that related to last night -- see below) at 9pm British Summer Time, I will be going live whilst at the same time taking part in a Skype discussion with Sharon Peters. Sharon is currently in Cape Town as part of a contingent from Teachers Without Borders, and we will be discussing why teachers should use educational technology in their lessons. Why not join us? I have to tell you that I have no idea whether or not I can do both things at once, so it may be a complete waste of your time, but hey: nothing ventured, nothing gained! (I have been looking for a decent, and preferably free, webcam splitter that actually works on a PC using Vista; if you know of one, please let me know.)
Update: that took place last night. But the Skype connection was flaky, and talking to Sharon in Blog TV proved impossible for the reasons given above.
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