What are SplashCasts?
Today TechCrunch published an article about the official launch of SplashCasts. For those who haven’t heard of them before here is a little blurb from their main page.
SplashCast enables anyone to create streaming media ‘channels’ that
combine video, music, photos, narration, text and RSS feeds. These
user-generated channels can be played and easily syndicated on any web
site, blog, or social network page. When channel owners modify their
channel, their content is automatically updated across all the web
pages ‘tuned’ to that channel.
Educational Potential
My first question was how is this different than podcast’s or Windows Movie Maker. In reality a user could create these multimedia presentation for quite some time, but the interface is much easier to navigate and
control. Users also have the added bonus of using content that is
already hosted at places like Flickr and YouTube without downloading and copying the content. That sure saves some time in the creation process.
With SplashCasts you are also basically creating your own channel. Much like I wrote about yesterday, everyone can be famous; everyone can have their own channel.
Some ideas for education off the top of my head:
- Teacher records classes and has a channel students can go and watch anytime.
- Teacher creates classes online using video, audio, photo’s, text, whatever… a true MULTI-MEDIA presentation.
- Assign students to create their own SplashCast regarding a subject.
- Create a class SplashCast that everyone can add to and update. It could be a great resource for other teacher’s as well.
What other applications in education can you think of?
Trial Run
I decided any review wouldn’t be totally complete without a test run. I signed up (free) with relative ease (they did ask for my birthday, but promised it would be kept private) and signed in. I must say I was pleasantly surprised at the ease of creating a presentation. I created a couple using text, audio, video from YouTube and even a RSS feed presentation. The flash interface was a little annoying to my ajax-centered (Gmail, Google Calendar, etc, etc.) life. Overall though I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
What has your experience been like?
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