Alec C Visits BCS and Ustream gets a first time test,

I thought on this fine winters night (Hah, it's April and it's snowing out; I LOVE living here) I'd write about the excellent visit we had with Alec Couros at Central and my experiments with digital video.

Part One: The Visit

On Tuesday April 15 we had Dr. Alec Couros visit with the students and staff at Central. He put together presentations of varying detail level for our various student groups dealing with cyber-bullying and other pitfalls of the information age. With the older group that I was in with most of them they were engaged and interested in the information that was presented. I think a lot of them sat up and paid more close attention when Alec showed a commercial on once you post it you can't get it back. Here's a YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwBz-hxjSLU. We also asked him to do a parent presentation that same night and we had a small group of parents come and listen to the same topic but the information was presented in a way that parents had the opportunity to see the wonders that are out there for their children but also some of the darker alleys that kids could go down. There were good questions and discussion had by this group. Thanks to Alec for spending the time with our staff students and parents. Hopefully we might find an opportunity to have him back again.

Part Two: Ustream Test Drive

I thought with Alec coming to the school I might have an opportunity to take advantage of some of the things that we shared at our last in-school tech inservice. I took some time to work out how to get a broadcast up on ustream and then worked with Donna and Owen to make sure we would have the ability to broadcast and chat. The only speed bump was the sound pickup that we had. The video worked really well but unfortunately the audio didn't work out too well. Oh well, live and learn for the next go around.

- A