YouTube is great for looking at and sharing video. But sometimes, you want more control over your distribution. With a Pro account (about $60 a year) at Vimeo, you can send out an email to people with a URL and a password. They don’t have to sign in to vimeo, or become a member. They can just watch the video online. And the videos can remain private to only those people you send emails to. You can also restrict which places can put up copies of your video (embedded) if you do decide to make the video public. There are also options to download the video as well as stream it. HD, or high definition, is the new standard in online video. Much better than previous versions.
If you use a projector in class, you probably have piles of powerpoint presentations. Why not let your students look at them at their leisure (and you can keep a copy online in case you lose the original). You can make a set of slides from a powerpoint presentation in minutes, upload it to SlideShare and share it publicly or privately.
You can add your voice to the slides if you like. This is a wonderful way to share your information with your students.
There are a lot of spoken word programs out there. People doing interviews, talking about their deepest darkest secrets, or just explaining things that they know. Spoken Word is a brand new (came out of beta today) site dedicated to collecting all these resources together. If you ever needed any authentic audio for your classroom, this is the place to get it. If you have a spoken word podcast or resource, you can get people to come to it. I’m going to add my student podcast Talking Tokyo as soon as I finish here.
Today is Friday, and it’s the 13th. So why not try your luck? StumbleUpon is a great way to explore the web for new and interesting things. Better than browsing, you can explore what other people find interesting. Sign up for an account and start finding people that have similar interests and you can refine what you find. A great way to take a quick break, a mental vacation, and maybe discover something new.
Twitter is the Internet’s hottets mode of communication these days. Like all good ideas, this is crushingly simple. Type in a message of less than 140 characters. You have a group of people (your followers) who’s list of messages this is added to. Your list of messages is what everyone you follow has added in the last few hours. You leave this open in your browser (or, increasingly, on your smart phone) and read in real time what others are thinking or doing.
Originally people posted what they were doing at that moment, and you got a sense of what your acquaintances were all experiencing. More and more, people are posting interesting things they see, hear or find. It is an amazing resource when you need an answer about something you know nothing in a very short time. Ask a question, your twitter followers answer in minutes or seconds.
In class? Set up a titter account for everyone, and have your students follow you. A great way to get feedback during class (put your feed from twitter up on the class projector, your students can comment in real time on your class). If you want a more restricted audience, try Yammer (restricted by company address, like @swu.ac.jp, I have that account), Jaiku, Plurk (with an interesting graphical interface), FriendFeed (twitter in steroids, collects stuff from all your social network sites, the upcoming twitter killer).
