Broadcasting Live Ustream.tv

I started looking into webstreaming options a few months ago - I don't know why it intrigues me - It's like the excitement of the pioneer radio and TV days, I guess - where people were just in there trying things - it wasn't all sophisticated and polished so the ordinary person could still have a shot at playing around in the medium - It's like my fascination for public access cable - I can't get enough of "Joe Live" and I always check in Wednesday evenings for a few minutes to see the local wrestling show (I've even called in a few times to ask questions - I'm wondering how they choose their wrestling personas - ha!)

I saw a program last week on people who read newspapers on the radio for the blind - I wanted to volunteer locally - and then thought - why not have that be the premise of a short broadcast - see how it goes - choose a couple of interesting articles - read them, then a selection from a nice book or something - just a short 15 minute thing - I tried it this morning and it was great - OK - no viewers -ha - but still, I did it....I may try it a couple of more times.

Already I see the value for the classroom - What material will I select to read and why? If students were doing a broadcast - what kinds of things would they include - would the broadcast be set in a historical or cultural context? I can see lots of possibilities here - For my ESL class, I want them to practice pronunciation and get some confidence-building.

The tool at Ustream.tv allows for viewers to text their comments during the broadcast and you can also allow for co-hosts to join in - so that's my next thing I'll try out with a friend at a distance...You can also record the broadcast and then upload to YouTube...
The embed code they gave didn't work - so I simplified it to match the YouTube embed codes I've used and then it worked - so I need to find someone with coding experience who can help me fix their code so that the comments feature works from the blog....

I'm going to try to broadcast a couple of mornings a week around 7:30 am.... so feel free to stop by :)