Global Immediacy

Yesterday I presented a workshop which I called “Global Immediacy: Using Video Telephony to Bring Distant Guests into Your Classroom.” It was designed to get faculty thinking about how they might use applications such as Skype in their teaching. I had a little help from George “Loki” Williams of SocialGumbo, we had a good attendance, and I was pretty happy with the outcome.

I was especially happy that I had a chance to work this fine photo into my presentation:

After every workshop, I hear from people who wanted to attend but couldn’t. Is there a handout they can have? Is there some online content they can look at? I continue to search for the best way to document and share these sessions. I find my slideshows don’t stand on their own very well without my voice providing the narrative. However, this time I remembered to make an audio recording, and so I can offer my first slidecast. Enjoy.

Notes: I’m using SlideShare, which allows me to embed the slideshow here, but I don’t like the way it automatically loads the audio. In my opinion it should embed like YouTube, with a poster image only, and require a click before loading the entire media. The audio in this case is a large file (probably higher fidelity than it needs to be) so instead I decided just to link. Also, the hands-on portion of the workshop didn’t work as well in this context so I cut it out. Alas, that means you won’t hear Loki. But don’t worry. If you close your eyes and listen carefully you can hear Loki no matter where you are on the planet. He doesn’t need Skype. Yes, he really is that loud. But if you really want to hear the full unedited audio I can provide that too.

Post scriptum: I did give a handout, but that material is online so I’ll just provide a couple more links:

• UNO professor Kim Bondy uses Internet videoconferencing — and her personal connections — to bring journalism stars to the classroom (Times-Picayune)
• The 10 that Established VoIP (Part 8: Skype) (iLocus)