Post #3 - Web 2.0 - Livestream

In my rather tawdry past as an amateur Japanese subtitler, one of my responsibilities to the community was to provide information and demonstration in the use of a myriad of assorted freeware tools.  Sometimes, written words were nowhere near enough, and I often dreamed of a program that would let me limit my audience but still be able to cast, either live or recorded, information without being tied to a large program.  At the time,  I made do with the tools available in Google's Hangout-verse, but recently a particular site has come to my attention that I would like to highlight here.  This program is called Livestream.  Like Google's Youtube & Hangout realities, it allows you to record video in real time, while "casting" to an audience; however, unlike Google's suite, it also allows you to cast and play videos as well.  There is an entire community of video casters (I actually discovered this site by watching a livecast of a litter of puppies), and you can record and cast any manner of items with fairly simple setup. It does require your internet connection to be of moderately decent speed, and your casts are only available for a limited time with a free subscription, but you are able to download and keep them for further use if desired.
When thinking of using this in the library, there are a couple of different options that I can imagine its versatility being useful.  Morning announcement programs, whereas back in my day they were created by archaic, cast-off technology from the local television station, could easily be managed (and archived) through a method such as Livestream.  Reports and presentations for asynchronous classes, or special projects, can also be managed in this way.  Although very much a one presenter to a mute audience platform, not having an actual "live" (read: visible) audience may help otherwise shy students get over their fears of presentation.  Teachers who are out of the classroom for a myriad of reasons could use this as well.  It's also an extremely cheap alternative to Adobe Breeze and other programs for distance education.

Viewer Comments:

ANNA BALLINGER, 2/19/2014 6:38 AM: Cool!

This looks neat!  I wonder if this would be a good way to do news casts for schools in the mornings!  Since most schools have smart boards now they could go to the feed and watch students or principal, etc. present morning announcements and news.
Another thing I thought of was things like students being able to show the whole school their science fair projects or things like that.  I definintely like this tool!  Kids love youtube, so this will be right up their ally :)