Blabbing About Periscope: Community Building and More

Four of us tried out the new website Blab this week. Blab is a website that enables four people to video conference. In addition, there is a chat window, and anyone can join and watch and text in comments. Plus, others can join the Blab video segment when one of the four people gives up a spot.

Best of all, once the Blab is completed, the person who initiated the Blab can download the Blab. The download provides access to the video part of the Blab, but the comments texted in during the broadcast are not included. The download can be embedded into a website or blog as I have done below. While the Blab is live, anyone on the Blab, including those watching it, can tweet a a link to invite others in to watch and comment.

The topics we blabbed were livestreaming, social media, and specifically the use of Periscope in schools.





Do you think Blab offers features beyond those of Google Hangouts or Skype? Explore some of the Blabs on the site. This is a relatively new tool, so expect updates and changes in the near future.

To get to Blab and to learn about it, go to Blab.im

Thanks for checking this post.

I will cross post this in my other blog. Thanks for checking out our Blab and for expressing an interest in this tool as well as Periscope. If you have questions, leave a reply. Thanks.

My New Favorite Digital Story App: Shadow Puppet

Why didn't I know about this free app sooner. This morning, I downloaded it to my iPad, went through the screen shots of how to use the app, and within a minute, I was up and running.

For my first attempt, just grabbed from my iPad camera roll some photos I had left over from a conference on campus at the University of Saint Joseph. Some were blurry, but as I was just experimenting and wanted to find out how seamless using the app was, I just used what I could find quickly that related to a single event.

So, uploaded a few of the pics right into the app. Then just audio recorded whatever came to mind for each photo, and saved the final product. Wanted to see what the share options were from there. For simplicity sake, selected share to email, and sent the video to my own email and to a colleague who helped plan the event captured in the video. She emailed back to say, "Love It."

Mind, you this was a first attempt, and when I opened the video from email, I could see it could use lots of improvement, but also wanted to find out from there if I could upload to a site like YouTube or Vimeo. The options were several. First, I selected from the emailed video to download, which I did on my Mac, and then I selected the option to share the video on YouTube. Worked like a breeze.

Feeling confident, decided to try my hand on a second video. Went back to the iPad, and made another one, this time also including a quick video I had in the camera roll. Found out the free version of Shadow Puppet allows for uploading 10 photos or videos, but was content with that. Went through the same process as outlined above, audio recording a quick narrative, sending the saved video to my email, accessing it from there, downloading it my Mac and then sending it out to YouTube.

Here are the two videos, but mind you, these were done quickly. As soon as I free up more space on my iPad to store more photos and videos, I plan to play with Shadow Puppet further.

First Attempt:

Second Attempt: Tried to find clearer pics on camera roll and selected one of the videos in the camera roll.

Do you have a favorite app for making quick videos? How do you envision using an app like Shadow  Puppet in the classroom?

Update: I tweeted out how much I enjoyed the ease of using Shadow Puppet and got a reply from the company, pointing to a page on its site with some samples. I am including a link to find the example of how the app was used by one teacher for students to tell about their art projects. Take a look and listen to what the students had to say: "Stories, Reflecting on Art Projects." While on the site, also notice the other examples, lesson plan ideas, and information about using the app to meet Common Core Standards.

So who could ask for anymore? Sure you need an iPad or iPhone, but grab one from a neighbor if you don't have one, and try out Shadow Puppet.

If you explored around the Shadow Puppet site, let us know what you found of interest.

Google Docs Talks

Well, really you talk and your comments get recorded into the Google Doc. Here is a video of how it works. It was created by a high school English running a paperless classroom, but the concept can be applied to anyone using Google Docs to collaborate. I already tried out the process to give feedback to a student, and the recording and playback worked perfectly for me. Now to try it out with more students and to see if this is concept that will spread to other classrooms. Let me know what you see as the possible application of voice recording into a Google Doc after you watch the video.