Attending a Live Webinar

I attended a “What The Tech” webcast on Tuesday, February 26^th from 4 to 5 pm.  The show was hosted by two tech experts, Andrew Zaviere and Paul Thorett.  The look of the show was quite professional, and the producers obviously had access to high quality broadcast equipment. However, while it both looked and sounded interesting, I think it would have made a better audio podcast vs. a video webcast.  The main shot was mostly of Mr. Zaviere behind an overhead microphone, much like you’d see in a radio studio.  The camera would occasionally change to the second host, but for the most part stayed on Andrew.  Except for the very few times they showed you a computer screen, you could have easily learned what the show intended through just the audio portion.  The discussion mostly revolved around basic tech innovations and their benefits and/or limitations: tablets, Roku, Linux, Windows 8 and multi-touch screen environments.  What would have been missed, though, without the video portion was the ability to post comments live and have an ongoing discussion about what the hosts were talking about.

Webcasts have come a long way since I attended my first one.  I would absolutely participate in one in the future – in fact, I will be attending a National Academy Foundation webcast in two weeks.  I believe students would learn a great deal by participating in online broadcasts; teachers can teach them concepts, but how authentic would their learning be if they could also hear from the experts!  I have a group of Freshman right now who are completely addicted to designing video games.  I believe it would be greatly beneficial to them to find a webcast that shows them tricks & tips to successful designing, as well as how current designers got their start.  I am also thinking of designing an assignment for my Film Production students, much like our main assignment this week, which would have them producing their own webcast.  I could either have them plan to teach a production concept to a beginner digital media student, or leave the topic open according to their interests.