I’ve been a fan of CoveritLive since I discovered it during Educon. I’ve used it successfully a couple of times, and intend to use it in the future when it makes sense to. But I wanted a few more options – like multiple authors and the ability to get my data out of their system. #
Turns out, so did others. They’ve added multiple author support, automatic moderation of comments, and some other snappy options. It’s a very, very useful tool for capturing events as they happen, both for me and for an audience. (Turns out I learn better, and take better notes, when I’m doing so for someone else.) I find the linear nature of the notes and archive, too, make for a very useful and re-readable dataset. Handy for a backchannel, too.I’m a big fan of what they’re up to, and yes, I probably would pay to use the service, if they get to that. It’s just that good.
(Oh – and I did try the data export – simple embed code. Easy.) #
My class has experiemented using it for conducting interviews for our podcasts. Everyone in the class during the interview is on a laptop, other classes in and out of the school can listen to the interview live on a ustream channel and submit q’s via coverit. One of the kids moderates the questions, decides which ones to approve which then go up on the screen on the computer of the interviewers. It’s so cool.
Bud (and others), how do you envision students using CoverItLive for anything related to citizen journalism?
-Mary
Anyway to slow it down? In a classroom of kids live blogging, it’s hard to keep up with the conversation.
Mary,
What a great question. I’ve got a longer post that I’d like to write about how we might start thinking about student citizen journalism, but I think it makes almost immediate sense to descend upon a city or school district meeting with a few computers. The teacher can moderate and students can post about the meeting taking place. Later on, the video of the meeting can be combined with the transcript to make for an excellent reflective opportunity.
I think tools like these are perfect for citizen journalists – students or otherwise.
[...] Mary asked a question the other day that I thought was worth pulling into a main post. She wrote: Bud (and others), how do you envision students using CoverItLive for anything related to citizen [...]
Mike,
Your comment was considered spam – forgive the posting delay. I think that perhaps the fast pace is one of the unfortunate consequences. While I don’t know how to slow that down during the event – you can certainly review at a slower pace after the fact. Say more – how are you live blogging with your students?