Last week was our school Science Fair. I’ve been working very closely with the Home & School Association developing the Library MakerSpace, and they asked me to help with the Science Fair planning as well. The idea was to make the evening more ‘Science is Fun’ for our K-4 school than stick to the scientific method. (No shooting – I’m just the messenger.) One of the areas I developed was Green Screen postcards. Our teachers were kind enough to model:
I then researched LiveStream, uStream and Webex, and even created accounts for two of them. I wanted to be able to show and talk about my setup, and that seemed really difficult. I’d need a lot of photos, and then either a slideshow or a way to have the photos readily available to share with viewers. I spent awhile on this – but none of them seemed to do it for me. Then I thought of Zoom. I’ve been part of several Zoom meetings, and PAECT, our PA ed tech organization recently purchased a license and agreement for us to use and could also help members with it. Unfortunately, this week (starting Sunday) was also the huge statewide tech conference sponsored by PAECT, so everyone – and I mean everyone – was pretty busy with that. One of my colleagues at work mentioned Lync (now known as Skype for Business) – and that was a good solution for me.
After 10 minutes trying to get everyone’s video and audio working at the same time, we were good to go. I went over my plan and set up, shared the examples and photos, and answered questions. We didn’t need the chat or messaging area as all of us were hooked up for audio. It went pretty smoothly, but as expected only took a few minutes. And I was unable to record as we weren’t set up for that feature. Blocked again!
The only way I could think of using live broadcasting with my students would be some kind of Skyping. I’ve had several people offer to help me with it when I’m ready, but with a crazy schedule of classes in and out all day I haven’t quite been ready to try it.
After all my research and the Lync meeting, I still wasn’t sure I had adequately completed this live broadcast assignment.
These initial attempts are a little embarrassing but hey – only way to go is up!
Science Fair 1 Science Fair 2 Science Fair 3