Go ahead and criticize for raving about an upcoming conference my new employer is hosting– but regardless I would still be excited about this week’s NMC Conference on Personal Broadcasting, taking place April 26 and 27 online via LearningTimes:
At the leading edge of a wave that will last for the next several years and beyond, personal broadcasting, which uses informally produced personal audio and video content as a form of personal expression and as a means of information delivery, is rapidly expanding into academe as small, easy-to-use devices increasingly allow people to capture and share personal experiences, information, and events.
From podcasting to video blogging (vlogging), personal broadcasting has clearly begun to impact campuses and museum audiences significantly. With roots in text-based media (personal websites and blogs), personal broadcasting of audio and video material is a natural outgrowth of a popular trend made possible by increasingly more capable portable tools.
The two day program is jam packed with real world pod/vid casting practitioners and goes far beyond the nuts and bolts of the technology. Okay, I am trying to build up the conference in a big way by heaping on the superlatives. I will relish being in the conference for the full two days, something I rarely managed before.
My session, still under… ahem… wraps… is Podcasting On the Cheap, aiming to highlight some of the clever ways teachers are using the free and available tools out there. I am very grateful already to the many of you blog readers who answered my call for an Odeo recorded greeting — Cole, Gardner, Karen, Tim, Chris, Arvind, Suzanne, Paul, Darren, and lovely Lucy (with the Boston accent!)…. yes, this will be part of Levine’s Law of starting with a demo (this is available now as an Odeo Podcast), and the rest of the slides and links are coming soon to a wiki yet to be named.
But my piece is small compared to the caliber of the other presenters.
There are some nifty features rolled into the LearningTimes site used for the conference. They have many places where participants can call in a toll free number and leave a short recording that is added to the discussion boards and session descriptions as audio flash files. We have also crafted up an avatar “soapbox” — using the phone in set up, anyone can leave an audio stream that becomes, until the next caller, the voice of an animated avatar (it’s mouth moves and it animates as the audio plays back in the browser):
Okay, it is a little silly (and yes, there are male avatars), but it fits the theme of making the broadcasting “personal”.
There’s still time to register,, operators are standing by 😉
Excellent presentation Alan! I think a lot of people want to know all their options and the process involved for creating these things.