Been meaning to write up some quick thoughts about Google Teacher Academy: Chicago, but realize that time is fleeting and I just didn’t see myself getting to it soon. SO, I decided to go the video route and do a quick vlog wrapup about it.

FYI, that’s the last time I use the camera on the front of the phone. While it’s great because I can see comments that are typed in live, and I can see myself and make sure I’m centered and such, the quality is SO much worse than the camera on the back. So from now on, I use the good camera and even if it’s a little laggy while watching it live, at least the archive will look much better. And let’s face it, thats’ much longer lasting.

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It’s no secret that I’m fascinated by live video streaming. I’ve never been one to do much editing, I like my media authentic, unscripted and unfiltered. And that’s the way I’ve always podcasted, well back when I used to do it on a regular basis (more often than once year).

Well, in the last month I switched from the Samsung Blackjack to the Nokia N95 which has an unbelievable video camera built into it which is perfect for live streaming. Since Nokia’s happen to be compatible with just about everything, I’ve got my choice of sites to use including Qik, Flixwagon, Kyte, Seesmic and more. My favorite right now happens to be Qik, which is what I used at NECC several times over, including the incredibly fun pair of broadcasts on airplanes before they took off.

However, as with with any new technology, I think the best way to figure out where it fits into my professional life is to start off playing. Try things out, experiment a bit, throw things up against the wall and see what sticks. And that’s what I’ve been doing with Qik lately.

Last week, I did my first CarCast in quite a long time (download link). I used an old hair tie to strap my phone to my suction cup GPS mount. Then I hit broadcast and recording the commute home, talking head style. Since it as mounted, I was able to keep my eyes on the road, and just shoot glances at the camera on occasion, to make sure it was still broadcasting. Very fun. I enjoyed it so much that I’ve actually bought a mount specifically for the phone in the car.

A couple of days later I rode my bike to work. On the way home, I realized that if I stuck the phone in the little pocket one of the backpack straps has, it would probably hold the phone in place well enough to do a BikeCast (download link). And so I did. Threw on my helmet, hopped on the bike, and broadcast my ride home. Well, most of it anyway, I kinda ran out of battery before I got there. Regardless, it worked rather well for the first time! People were able to join me for the ride home in real time, and you can see the archive now. It’s a little slanty, so sit down if you get motion sickness easily.

So what does all this mean for education? To be honest, I’m not sure. Would I recommend everybody start broadcasting their commutes every day? Well, no… But this seems significant to me and worth more exploration. It feels powerful. It seems like it opens up new doors. Imagine being able to share accomplishments with parents in real time. To broadcast successes, make the classroom more transparent than ever before. What do we do with it? I don’t know, but maybe we can figure it out together.

However, we’re not the only ones trying to figure out what it all means. In fact, there’s a certain Representative from Texas that has been doing some rather interesting things with Qik. Last week, when the Republicans staged their protest before the House let out for a 5 week recess, the lights were shut off, the microphones were shut off, and the cameras were shut off. So was the general public blocked off? Not by a long shot. John Culberson, representative from Texas, continued the broadcast via his cell phone. He had interviews, covered a press conference, and provided the only glimpse into what was fascinating day in US politics. An integral part of the political system, it may not be. But there’s definitely some significance that bears more contemplation, exploration and innovation.

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I know most people have already put up their post-NECC reports, but I figure it’s never really too late and I’m glad that I had time to put some things in perspective and do a little soul searching before writing this. There’s so much to write about, both positive and negative, so I think I’m going to try to separate them into two different posts.

Without question, while the sessions are phenomenal, the most memorable parts of NECC often seem to be the networking. It seemed that every ten feet there was another person on my list of “People I Need to Meet F2F” and unfortunately there was never enough time to have a proper conversation. I truly felt humbled that I met so many people who consider me a part of their learning networks, personal or professional. Additionally, there were so many people that I’ve been a fan of for so long that it was an honor to finally meet them in person. I hate to do name lists because I always forget people, but among the most memorable were Miguel Guhlin and Bud Hunt. These are colleagues and friends that I have known for years, but never met face to face. It was truly a pleasure to finally be able to shake their hand, give them a hug and tell them in person just how much I’ve admired their work over all these years.

Of course there were so many others that I could say the same for, but this isn’t about name dropping. It’s about friendships, and making personal connections between nodes in our networks. And no matter how many names I listed, I couldn’t name them all. I can’t remember who said this, but someone at EduBloggerCon truly summed the networking side up quite eloquently: “Every single F2F conversation with someone makes the 140 characters that much more meaningful.” That’s not a direct quote, so if you said it, then let me know so I can get it right and give you credit.

Without a doubt, live video streaming was (as predicted) a big topic at NECC. I’m still trying to get a grasp on how many sessions were streamed. EdStream.TV was not as successful as I’d have liked it to be, but it was a spectacular learning experience that I think has huge potential. In particular, I learned that you really need someone dedicated solely to keeping the project organized and handle the video production, whether on site or off site is irrelevant. Unfortunately I just had too many other time commitments to devote the necessary hours to make it a true success. MAJOR kudos to Jen Wagner for her incredible effort aggregating the streams together here and making sure that virtual attendees had just about as rich an experience as physical attendees.

While backchannels and live streams were becoming commonplace in many sessions, the internet connectivity issues were always around to throw a monkey wrench in the works. During two of the panel discussions I participated in, I couldn’t stay connected to the backchannel to contribute there. Very aggravating. Even my cell-phone-as-a-modem solution failed me, despite the fact that we were in AT&T’s corporate home. However, most backchannels were archived and quite honestly are a wealth of information. That being said, I think it’s a bit presumptuous to assume that people know what a backchannel is, how to find it and how to participate. Vicki Davis has made it a priority to explain the fine art of backchanneling in some of her presentations, and I think she’s got the right idea. I’m going to make that a priority in future presentations.

Speaking of backchannels, while Chatzy and CoverItLive seem to be the hot ones right now, my backchannel of choice has become Plurk. Why Plurk? Well, for one thing, I think it could be the best successor to Twitter that I’ve seen yet. Instead of a series of loosely related posts, you get one threaded conversation with its own RSS feed and permalink. Check out Ginger Lewman’s live blog from Ian Juke’s session. Not only that, but it has a rock solid mobile version that you can use from a cell phone, iPhone or any other mobile device. Heck, on a PC it looks alot like Twitter for those that don’t like the timeline. So while I couldn’t get online, if the backchannel had been on Plurk I could still have participated actively via mobile.

On the subject of mobiles, I don’t think I’ve ever used my cell phone more at a conference before. I used it to keep up with Twitter. I used it to keep up with Plurk. I used it to check in with emails, both work and personal. I used Google Maps on there to find where I was going. I used it to read blogs and to look up people’s names and information. I used my phone as a camera and a camcorder. And as many saw in both Will’s and Hall’s sessions, I used it to do several live video streams. I broadcast solo from the airplane on the way to NECC, and interviewed Kelly Dumont, Bonnie Muir and Darren Draper (who had the misfortune of sitting next to me) on the return flight. Video of that one is embedded below.

While the videos may be a little rough and got cut off before the end, I felt that they were a great proof of concept and something I will definitely continue to pursue. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that I believe that live video streaming via mobile is going to play a crucial role in education within the next five years. These devices are just too powerful and diverse to blow off. I’m seriously considering upgrading from the Blackjack to a Nokia N95 just so I can improve my live streams and get a full screen browser.

I was pretty busy presenting in formal sessions, panels and in the booth, so I didn’t have too much time to attend many sessions. I did attend the DEN’s Second Life Leadership Council’s panel presentation about building out their personal learning networks which was absolutely phenomenal. A classic example of how you can never be over prepared. They knew what they wanted to say, had it timed well, and really did magnificent job of sharing the fine work they’re doing in Second Life.

Speaking of being over prepared, I did catch Hall Davidson’s cell phone presentation. It was easily the best presentation I saw at NECC, and I’m not just saying that because I work with him. I don’t think there’s anyone out there that understands the art of presenting better than Hall and watching him up on stage is like a magic show that you actually learn from. It was chock full of hands on demonstrations and it was a pleasure watching hundreds of educators break out their own phones and participate. If you missed it, they did record it. You can catch it at ISTE’s NECC On Demand website.

Of course, then there was the DEN Pre-Conference which was an absolute blast. Where else are you going to get to see your boss get thrown in jail, a friend get hog tied, participate in an Old West scavenger hunt and STILL have time to network, share ideas, and do a little presenting? The DEN’s 3rd birthday party was a huge “overflowing” success and with STAR Discovery Educators in every corner of the room it was more like a family reunion than cocktail party. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Howl at the Moon, the piano bar where I left both my voice and my dignity. I can honestly say it’s the most interesting place I’ve ever celebrated my *ahem* birthday.

All in all, it was definitely a NECC to remember. Next time I’m going to try to make a point to carve out more free time so I can actually spend more time chatting with people beyond the 10 minute, “Hello! I follow you! I read you! Thanks for all you do! Hope to see you again soon!” There were way too many of those unfortunately.

SO that’s the end of part 1, The Good. More to come.

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Before I get started, MAJOR kudos to the DEN in Second Life Leadership Council who have done a phenomenal job of putting together a truly amazing weekly series of presentations. It’s one of the best sources of professional development that you probably didn’t even know existed. And the speakers don’t just focus on Second Life either.

So last night I had the opportunity to present. The way I figure it, Second Life is all about breaking down boundaries and trying to see how far we can push technology, education, and most importantly our own perceptions of what is and isn’t possible. With that in mind, I sat down and thought about what I liked and didn’t like about presenting in Second Life.

When I first presented in Second Life, the thing that I disliked the most was the fact that I had to type out the entire presentation. Yes, I could have pre-typed it all and used a script to display it all, but that’s just not the way I roll. So the entire presentation was almost an exercise to see how well I could type over a long period of time. Not too fun, and I’d imagine that while it may have been novel for the audience, it must have been pretty tedious.

All that changed when they introduced voice chat. Now all of a sudden, I could just talk normally and everybody could hear me in real time. HUGE improvement. However, there were other challenges still in place. For example, in order to show slides, you need to take a PowerPoint, save it as JPG images, renumber them (adding in a leading 0), upload them into Second Life (which costs 10 Lindens per image) and then put them into a viewer of some sort. Even once you’d done all that, you still had to deal with issues like other people hijacking your presentation and clicking through it while you’re trying to present. And of course, depending on how large your images are, often they take quite a long time to rez (and you never know whether other people are seeing the same thing you’re seeing).

Of course, the final issue is always that durn avatar. I’m a multi-tasker, but there’s no way that I can realistically present coherently and make my avatar do interesting things at the same time. I’m just not that talented.

As I see it, the solution for so many of these problems is live video streaming. To go from a frozen avatar waiting for his slides to rez, to a live talking head that can switch back and forth to a presentation or screencast-demo. I’d heard that there were ways to stream into Second Life, but most of those presentations were big ones done by major corporations, likely spending oodles of money. With a little elbow grease and some creative thinking though, I thought surely there must be a way to do it.

And there was.

Step 1: Veodia
Veodia is a streaming site that I knew from the Office 2.0 conference. They have very high quality streams and the ability to watch them via some mobile devices, iPhone included. However, interestingly enough, they also provide an RTSP link for their streams. I don’t know much about RTSP, but what I do know is that it can be used to stream into Second Life. So I set up an account there and got my webcam groove on.

Step 2: Create your ‘video screen’ in Second Life
Just create an object, any object. Apply a unique texture to one surface of it. Why unique? The live stream is going to replace ALL instances of this texture. So if you use it anywhere else, it’ll be replaced by the live video. No, I don’t know what will happen if you use the same texture on some clothing, but I do intend to find out.

Step 3: Tweak your land settings
Yes, you do need to have permission to modify land settings. Or, depending on where you’re presenting, you could have a land owner do this for you. By going to World -> About Land and clicking over to the Media tab, you can choose a specific texture for your lands streaming media. Apply the same texture that you used in Step 2 here. Then, choose Movie from the drop down box and for the URL, paste in your Veodia streams RTSP link.

Step 4: Click Play
At this point, all you need to do is rez your video screen and click play from the movie controls for the land (lower right corner of your screen). Once you do that, the texture you choose will be replaced by your live video stream. Don’t forget to smile for the crowd!

That’s it. Pretty darn simple when you get right down to it. And then all of a sudden your face is streaming live into Second Life as big or small as you want. Since Second Life is memory intensive, and so is streaming video, and all of my computers are pretty underpowered, I actually streamed from a different computer than I was running Second Life on.

Of course, beaming myself into Second Life was a neat trick, the goal was to improve my ability to present in Second Life. This means I had to get around those wonky PowerPoint presentations. I wanted to share my desktop in real time, to be able to display websites and navigate them without dealing with all the slow rezzing issues. To tackle this one, I turned to a free piece of software called Split Cam. It’s PC only, but you could also use Many Cam or CamTwist to do the same thing. Basically it serves as a virtual camera that sites between your streaming server and your webcam. Using Veodia, I choose SplitCam as my camera, and SplitCam displayed my webcam to be streamed. However, with a couple of clicks, I could switch and have SplitCam display my desktop instead. So far as Veodia was concerned, my desktop was just another webcam to display. By doing this, I could share everything happening on my desktop through that same video stream.

Not only did it work, it worked REALLY well. I could show web sites. I could demonstrate software. I could even pop open PowerPoint and start a slideshow full screen. It displayed the exact same slides I’d want to show in Second Life, but it did so INSTANTLY for everybody watching. No waiting to rez. I could click through it as fast as I could want and no need to wait for people to catch up. Very slick. I highly recommend it as a means for presenting.

To be honest, if I had left it there it would have been plenty. But there was one thought that I couldn’t get out of my head. “I’m still tied to my desk. How can I get away from it?” I suppose I could have tried to find a wireless webcam, but that still would have had limitations.

I have been exploring methods of streaming live video via cell phone recently. Qik looks like it has huge promise, but while they announced Blackjack support last week, as of writing this they still haven’t been able to deliver. Which brings me to CometNow. While CometNow has major UI issues, an awful embeddable widget, and is in dire need of a proper support page, it DOES allow you to create a live video stream from most Windows Mobile devices, and it works very very well. How to bring that stream into Second Life tho?

I wound up going about it the old fashioned way. I started a live feed on my phone first. Then I used SplitCam to display my desktop and loaded up the CometNow page. I made it full screen and voila! Cell phone streaming to CometNow. CometNow displayed full screen on my computer. SplitCam sharing my desktop to Veodia. Veodia sending the stream into Second Life. I actually had to crank up my computer speakers and then the webcam picked up and rebroadcast the audio.

And then I took a walk! It started off badly tho. I wanted to show Aiden to the group, but it turns out he wasn’t asleep yet. He kinda sorta started screaming which made the Wife justifiably pissed. But I was able to take the people in SL watching down the stairs, through the living room, out the back door and into my backyard. Live. I could have walked around the block. Driven to Walgreens. Jogged a few miles. And taken the audience with me the entire time.

Yes, the video was choppy. Clearly I was pushing this computer (and my broadband connection) way past the red line. But the fact is, it worked, and I was able to do it for free.

Streaming live from my backyard into Second Life. Who would have thought it? It was a very cool little experiment that worked, but really it was more proof of concept than anything else. How can it be done more elegantly? What possibilities does this open up? What do you do with this sort of ‘power’? And how can we use it to improve education?

I’d love to say that I have those answers, but I don’t. But maybe you do. Hopefully you’ll take this experiment and try it out yourself. And then see how far you can stretch it yourself…

Click here to view some images from the presentation

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A few years ago, the big splash at NECC was live blogging. After that it was podcasting, when Apple first announced that iTunes was going to support podcasts at NECC. Last year big splashes were the Bloggers Cafe, Twitter and back channeling.

So what’s next?

I don’t think too many people are going to be surprised when I surmise that the big splash this year is going to be live video coverage of the conference. In fact, I dare say that the people who are not at the conference are going to experience something pretty unique (as of now). I’m guessing that the people who can’t attend NECC are going to have their choice of multiple sessions to watch live at any given time.

Think about that. Sitting at home and not just being able to read about the sessions, not just being able to hear them, not just being able to participate with people sitting in the audience, but actually getting the chance to WATCH them live and even have some choice regarding WHICH sessions you’re going to be watching!

Why do I think it’s going to happen? Well, think about how big uStream has become in education. Every day people are broadcasting high quality professional development opportunities. Hang out on Twitter long enough and you’ll find people announcing live streams from conferences around the country. While it may still be in its infancy, it’s a significant enough technology that Will Richardson and David Jakes are doing a spotlight session on the subject at NECC.

But the real reason it’s going to be so big…. is simply because its become so easy to do. Anybody with a webcam can be broadcasting live. And simply because they can, people will. And so long as they’re doing it, they’re going to want an audience. Which means that people will be announcing them on Twitter, on Ning, on their blogs, and everywhere else they can. This means that viewers away from the conference will not only have some choice in what they watch, but they’ll actually have people competing for their attention! Just like at a real conference, off site viewers are going to need to make some hard decisions. Which sessions do they watch live? Which do they want to see and participate in the back channel, and which can they just catch up on later?

If this actually occurs, it will be a major victory on several fronts. For one thing, people that can’t afford to travel to conferences can actually participate in real time. That really is something special that’s hard to measure the value of. Additionally, the message from these presentations can reach much larger audiences over time. I still get comments from presentations of mine that I did several years ago because people are finding recordings of them after all this time. These archives are an incredible resource for the presenters because they can actually SEE their own presentations, and hear/read how the audience reacts to them. This is an invaluable part of improving one’s own presenting ability that gets so often overlooked. But most importantly, it allows people in attendance, turn around and help spread the message to others who aren’t attending, in person or virtually. If you see an amazing presentation, having access to archived live streams allows you to pass it along to other educators, administrators and colleagues that might never have seen them… or that may really NEED to see them.

One last piece before I wrap this up. I’ve been talking mostly about uStream, because that’s where the comfort zone is right now for many of us who hang around the cutting edge. We’ve been doing it for close to a year now and have figured out most of the in’s and out’s of the process. But if you really want to surf the razor’s edge, you need to cut out the umbilical cord. That’s right, no USB cables, no computer, no WiFi required. Sites like Qik.com and CometNow.com enable you to create and broadcast live video streams from your cell phone. While I haven’t been able to try out Qik (Nokia only), I’ve experimented with CometNow several times and have been very very impressed with the quality of its mobile streams. I’m planning on doing some serious broadcasting from NECC using my mobile device. I have about three or four extra batteries and I plan on bringing them all to the conference!

Whether you’ll be in attendance or attending virtually, it promises to be a very exciting conference experience this year!

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