I have been learning a lot about elearning development and course delivery methods. Many trainers out there know that video is an important tool that will help ease and dramatically accelerate the delivery of course content to learners, and it seems to me that the elearning industry still hasn’t figured out a way to utilize video to its advantage.
Many designers think video is too expensive to produce or requires professional personnel, or the training teams think learners cannot ask questions because video courses are pre-recorded. All that is wrong. Now-a-days you can stream live video courses on the web, interact with learners, and create video library online all for free. One example is YouTube, but even more conducive to elearning needs is Justin.tv.
Everybody knows YouTube, but I have no idea why Justin.tv is still not a popular tool in the elearning community. Even with eLearnChat using Justin.tv to put out its video interviews on elearning topics, it seems surprising that I don’t hear more about training teams using the free tool. Justin.tv is the easiest way to create live video and show anyone in the world what’s happening in your field now.
For those of you who are not familiar with Justin.tv: it’s a website where you can broadcast live video from your smart phone, iPad or computer to the internet instantly to everyone or just to one selected learner. You can also broadcast videos from your computer library or your DVD player directly online.
The website has a small “YouTube like” screen and chat room window on the side of the web page for learners to share questions, comments, and links and to interact directly with the instructor or among themselves while they watch the video course.
If you want to broadcast any course (live video or not) all you need to get is a free account and after that you get a free online channel from which you can broadcast your live video and audio. You can set your channel to have a password so that only viewers you invite can enter your channel. When they enter, they can view your course or video webinar while they interact with everyone on the chat room. If you want to stream your video courses from your own website by embedding the video on your site, Justin.tv provides the service.
Justin.tv makes it fun, easy, and fast to gather and engage with your learners all over the world. It’s a great way to motivate people to learn your courses, follow you on Twitter, buy your product, donate to a cause, or simply establish a larger network.
Look into it and let me know if you are, in fact, using Justin.tv for learning. Please comment below.
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Mohamed Safwat attended college at San Francisco State University, where he earned his BA in Radio and TV in 2005. He freelances for variety of corporate clients nationwide as a multi media adviser and motion graphics designer. Mohamed is especially proud of having produced promotional videos for motivational speakers and conferences speakers and full length videos for real estate seminars.