Fun With Ustream.tv

I'm finding it harder and harder to make time for the day-to-day activities of school with all these cool tools and gadgets out there. Honestly, it's the end of the day, and it's sunny and warm out. Why would I want to grade when I can play around with my latest distraction -- Ustream.

Ustream is a great site that lets you stream live video over the internet. More than that, though, it also provides a chat feature so that you can facilitate a discussion about what is being filmed. There are a host of other great features to it as well, but for now, I think it's just great to be able to open up the classroom to a worldwide audience.

So, after a few practice runs, I finally tried it out with my students for real. Each year during our Greek mythology and Ulysses unit, my classes put together plays as a culminating activity. Sometimes, if there is enough time, they are able to write their own missing chapter to The Adventures of Ulysses. However, other times, like this year, they work in small groups of five and six to prepare short one-act myths from a book I have. The students prepare costumes and props, memorize their lines, and do just about everything short of selling tickets to their performances. At show time, on the day before vacation, we invite the entire team to watch the productions, and each year it goes really well.

However, this year, I decided to use Ustream to broadcast the performances live so that parents could also enjoy the plays. And, I have to say that aside from a few sound issues, it went really well -- especially considering that I was filming with a $40 webcam instead of a proper video camera. Here they are below:



So, the next day was even more fun. Our district hosted a Blue Ribbon Conference for teaching and learning, and many of us participated in Ustream backchannels. This one in particular was a question and answer session hosted by Will Richardson. The feed allowed people from all over the world to tune in and join the conversation. Another feed allowed me to sit in one session and watch and participate in another simultaneously.

If harnessed appropriately, this type of technology set up in a classroom environment can open up a tremendous amount of possibilities. Students could learn from the conversations in the room and they could learn from each other with the chat feature. Parents and other classrooms could watch and join in on the conversations to extend the discussion beyond the classroom walls making for a wider perspective and richer discussion.

If any of you out there have experimented with Ustream or are regularly using it as a classroom tool, let me know how it's working.