Springing Forward with Tech @ Springfield

With the excitement of the chicks hatching from their eggs, I failed to go into detail about how the viewing of the hatching chickens was made possible! And the answer is ustream.tv. Initially, we wanted the eggs to be visible for the entire class to see, so we brought in elmo. Elmo was perfect to project the eggs that were inside the incubator for the class to see. “But what if they hatch over the weekend?” the students pleaded. So I thought ustream. Perfect.

From the ustream team themselves, ” Ustream.TV is the live interactive video broadcast platform that enables anyone with a camera and an Internet connection to quickly and easily broadcast to a global audience of unlimited size. ”

We connected a webcam to a computer that could be designated just for the chicks, logged into ustream.tv with an account I had made, and set up a show. It was too easy. Five days later, we had 3,020 5,763 views, and at certain points in the day yesterday had 82 viewers watching at the same time. And those viewers weren’t just inside the district. The included students in districts throughout Pennsylvania, as well as people who stumbled upon the video all the way in California. This from CA: “thank you SO much for making this the happiest chick-watching for me and my co-worker. we were OBSESSED! and we’re still watching them!!”

Thanks to ustream we were able to expand the viewing of the miracle of life to so many more than those inside the classroom yesterday. Real life happening in real time, shared with so many.