According to Marshall Kirkpatrick, UStream.tv is about to report 10 million unique visitors last month. That’s a pretty huge number for a site that’s only about a year old, and it says something about the appeal of both producing and interacting with live television. I know that the story I tell in my presentations of Arthus holding court live to the world on the night of the New Hampshire primary is one of my favorites when it comes to a signpost of just how far these technologies have come. Pretty amazing when you think about it, that kids even younger than Arthus can create their own live television shows for global audiences.
Not that this doesn’t come with a certain feeling of trepidation. I will guarantee that it won’t be long before YouTube’s “worst practices” will be seen as minor compared to what we’ll get through the built in iSight or web cams or even the web streaming phones that are becoming more common (all of which, of course, will later be archived to YouTube no doubt.) But as many of us have already experienced, there are also lots of potentially great uses for live streaming that make it worth thinking about in an educational context.
Ironically, the main problem I have with UStream is that it’s almost too easy to do, and therefore we’re bound to see a lot of pretty bad content coming across our screens. How do we get ourselves and our kids invested in a process that moves us all towards more “quality” in a traditional sense? Or should we even be worrying about that? Will the best content, the best uses bubble up? Should the traditional measures and standards apply, and, if so, to what extent?
Dave Jakes and I (and perhaps some other “special” guests”) are going to be doing a spotlight at NECC next month on this very topic. If you have any thoughts or ideas that you think might fit with the presentation, please let us know.
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Hi Will,
one way I effectively used Ustream is when I had to stay home to watch sick kids. Instead of writing sub plans, I “ustreamed” into my students’ classes and delivered the lesson from home. I used webmax (like camtwist) to show my desktop and to demo procedures. The kids used the chat to ask questions and I would be able to answer them in real time. This became a very useful way to still be able to connect with my students and interact in a meaningful way. I’ll definitely be there for the session on Monday.
John
Hi Will,
I think a first answer to the quality problem is to encourage kids (and adults) to think about the purpose of the content they create. Is it to entertain? To inform? To inspire? To clarify a misconception? Imagine if each site where users generate content (youtube, ustream, myspace et al) asked before each post: What is your purpose? And there was a checklist (multiple checks allowed.)
This would allow the creators to realize “Hmmm…I’m making my fifth mindless video of the week. Maybe next week I’ll check off the “educate” box.” Clearly quality control wouldn’t still be firmly in place–but for adolescents (and grownups) to realize that there’s more to sharing than entertaining, we’d have a step in the right direction.
By the way, this post comment was intended to be educational yet mildly entertaining.
Thanks!
Jason
Thanks for bringing my post into the conversation, Will. I wonder whether there will ever be a mass media that is primarily high quality. Many people are experimenting, having fun or not that good at the hard skills of producing content. They still have a right to have the experience and possibly find community. A relatively select few will have the motivation, skills and life circumstances to invest themselves in making high quality content. Just some thoughts. Good luck with your presentation.
PS - John Maklary - did you literally use UStream.tv for teaching those classes? That’s awesome!
Marshall,
yes, I used Ustream.tv literally for teaching a lesson. My kid got sick that morning and I had to stay home. We were at a point in class where I was going to go through a technical demo of a software app we were using and I couldn’t expect a sub to effectively deliver it (and the sub plans would have taken forever to write). It was a little bumpy at first as the kids got used to me remotely teaching but it progressed to a very usable instructional delivery tool.
Hi Will,
I think it is pretty amazing that a one year old site could have over 10 million visitors in one month as well. I think the numbers alone show that this cite has something great to provide people. As an educator, I think it does have a lot of great ways that it can be used. I know several teachers that have used videos from UStream in their classroom. I think it is a great educational tool because it is something new that students are into. I think it is the job of educators to set a standard and an example to the types of material that is allowed. I think we should keep our standards the same but open up to new ways of sharing and presenting material.
I’ve been working a lot with Channel 4 over the past year on how we get thousands of contributors to online communities attached to TV programmes to become ever more creative. So far, so good, but the real test is on a project that launches June 30. The write-up is here:
http://www.lastbroadcast.co.uk/students/v/4773-channel-4-and-myspace-launch-year-dot-project.html
If you fancy hearing about it, I’ve not got any talks lined up for NECC (I decided to be a tourist for once) and would happily share some energy on the podium with you guys. Question is, can you organise subtitling at such short notice
YouTube and UStream will go the way of desktop publishing. The tools make it easy and cheap to create useless ugly garbage (UUG), and so we see a lot of that. But you also have good storytellers using the medium to tell stories well, albeit in a similar fashion to what we have seen before.
Many UUG producers will get bored with it and quit after the novelty wears off. Others will realize that they are producing UUG and decide to ramp up the production values and content. They’ll copy the techniques of the good storytellers. Some of them will realize that gosh, this is harder than I thought it would be , and quit. Others will persevere, and continue to create and experiment because gosh darn it, I can do it better the next time.
And at some point, the YouTube/UStream version of Sergei Eisenstein or Alfred Hitchcock will come along and use the unique affordances of the new medium to tell stories in a completely new way.
Let’s just hope it’s something better than http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5tr4_Jh8dg