Teraknor

Ok, so I am an edugeek and tonight I did a tryout of live streaming from my desktop to Facebook Live. While a little 'rough' around the edges and definitely low par in production values. It did work and wasn't difficult to produce.

If you are confused, Numberwang is a word (well kind off), introduced by two British comedians ridiculing some of the banal day time television quiz shows. Do you find that organisationally devised targets have the same feel about them - a complete load of numberwang where everyone is striving to meet numbers that may have been simply plucked from mid-air. Student numbers - recruitment, retention, achievement etc can be quantified. However, they are not easy to measure. Population variance quickly turns this into a meaningless art, especially when you are dealing with large datasets. I have seen colleagues internally and externally break wind over a 1% shift up or down regarding all manner of measures - why is this not expected? Personally shifts of 5% are interesting, 10% worth considering and also context is everything. If you have 10 students and gain 2, 20% is worthless. However, when applied to a programme of 400 students, see a different picture. Please - stop playing

Don't you love the way we make connections, personally, locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. I could describe myself as a member of a range of different communities. Work, academic, personal and a mixture of all of the above. Appearing at different conferences, I find a sub-set of the same souls appearing. National and international - different souls recurring at different venues. They are not entirely independent, however some groups I interact with are smaller than others - forming their own parochial cliques. Others more welcoming and open to different ideas and interactions. What Venn diagrams do you interact with?

A couple of days ago I crowd sourced ideas and experience from colleagues on our own corporate social media platform (Yammer). It worked - better, it was a library technician that came to my aid. Facebook were promoting all manner of commercial live streaming tools - however OBS  does the job on any operating system for free. I have already tried some scenarios, multiple cameras, desktop and window sharing. I will need to build up my experience. This I do not see as a particular challenge. My hope is that we will soon be able to offer live screencasts or alternate sessions via facebook live. With the added bonus that they can also be recorded - maybe this will become the way forward for live as well as pre-recorded television. 

Today I am presenting to some colleagues in a different faculty - it's ok, I have had my shots and promise to return safe and sound to the womb of my one true affiliation. Wit aside, I note that this slidedeck has undergone multiple iterations over the last two years. The topic is in demand, the venues differ - I have used it remotely more than once and face to face on a number of occasions. The idea is evolving, yet the core deck remains the same. Each time, I alway sanity check the slides, tweak numbers and vary the first two slides, depending on my audience. Kinda nice that the idea isn't a one hit, one deck wonder.