Whether you want your local students to have a way of meeting outside of the classroom, your distance learning students to remotely collaborate in their study groups or for you to conduct seminars online or have one-on-one conferences with your research students, the technology available to us today affords us with many free and easy solutions that connect people, and that allow for the sharing of videos and images as well as text and sound. The types of technologies focused on here are screen capture, screencast and screen share technologies along side video conferencing applications. These types of tools are more and more often being bundled together – so teach yourself what each technology does so that you can decide which ones are important to you.

In this post, I’m not going to go into great detail about the ways in which you could apply these technologies within an educational context. Instead, my intention is to build an evolving list of resources to which you can refer each time you find yourself looking for a new way to connect with your students (or to have them connect with each other).

Because the technologies below can seem similar to one another at first glance, it’s important to have as clear an idea as possible about what you want the technology to do for you. If you’re not sure exactly what it is you’re looking for, browse through the list and start to develop a familiarity with the capabilities of the tools. To help you get comfortable with their features, I’ve included links to demo videos and/or tutorials where they are available.

Just to clarify for those of you who might be unclear about the difference between Screen Capture vs. Screencast vs. Screen Share tools:

Creating a screen capture (a.k.a. ‘screenshot‘ or less eloquently as a ‘screen dump‘) is basically the process of taking a static (still) photo of your screen (great content to add to help documents and other instructional material that mix text with images). A screencast is a way for you to capture moving images (videos) of what you see on your screen and share them with other people so that they can see what you see (useful for demonstrating tools or for giving overviews of resources and course websites to distance learning/remotely located students). Participating in a screen share means to either have access to someone else’s computer or to give access to the other members of your group (lots of security issues arise in this scenario, but some people find the function useful).

Screen Capture / Screencast

Demo Video

Demo Video

Demo Video

Demo Video

Demo Video

Demo Video

Demo Video

Read more about Skitch here

Demo Videos & Tutorials

Read more about sni.ps here

Sample Uses Videos

Video Conference / Screen Share

Demo Video

Demo Videos

Demo Video

Overview

FAQs

Demo Video

About

FAQs

Demo Video

Also see their education program

Tutorials

Demo Video

And remember, if you’re a MAC user, you can easily take quick pictures (screen shots) of any part of your screen by simply pressing COMMAND SHIFT 4 and highlighting the area you want to capture. A .png file of your selection appears neatly on your desktop.

Have I missed a tool you want to share with others? Add a comment and let me know!

I intentionally set aside some time to read eLearn Magazine‘s Predictions for 2009.  I feel the need to say ‘intentionally’ because I’m finding that if I don’t specifically allocate time to accomplish defined goals, I generally end up tossing away an unfinished To Do List and that just leaves the bitter taste of guilt in my mouth.

Anyway, continuing on from what I was saying in yesterday’s post, the predictors also anticipate that the lower costs and more convenient access to e-learning will result in its increased demand in the upcoming year.

Allison Rossett expects to see more technology however with a disproportionate level of understanding of how to use it. Translation: more opportunities for confusion! Not surprising though, as the rate at which new developments in the applications of technology mushroom on an hourly basis, while the training and development initiatives within educational institutions do wonders at keeping skill levels of teachers stagnant in the areas of educational technology. Perhaps this could be an opportunity for improvement – dare I say, a point on the agenda – for schools intent on gaining some footing in these fast paced digital times…

Mr. Downes predicts the proliferation of synchronous online classes…and considering the number of upcoming online seminars I’m scheduled to have with my tutor groups this year (something I haven’t seen this much of since I started my MA ODE with the OU in 2006), I think he might already be right!

Roger Schank asks the question, “Does a college degree guarantee any practical (material) success in life?”. He predicts that many institutions will have to evaluate what kind of graduate they’re producing and whether these new entrants into the workforce are capable of contributing in any meaningful way. On this note, I just heard a story from a friend yesterday that many of his former classmates at Cornell are deciding to prolong their graduate studies for one more year in an attempt not to have to face the reality of the current job market. If schools put more emphasis on the development of enterprise and entrepreneurialship in their core curricula, would we have as many ripe students still hanging onto the tree branches?

I won’t comment on each prediction but have a look through the list for yourself. Ugur Demiray shines a great monetary ray of optimism on the global e-learning industry, Jay Cross touches upon the recent phenomena of closing down corporate training and development departments and replacing them with coaching and mentoring schemes designed to foster ‘a more natural approach to learning’, and David Porush comments on what he sees as the ‘incoming tidal wave’ of returning students as a consequence of current job markets.