Allan Carrington¹

¹University of Adelaide

Abstract:
The Internet and educational technology have given teachers powerful new ways to interact with students. Participants will be introduced to some of the latest tools for online collaboration, interactive teaching and student feedback. The Internet has shifted from just publishing webpages and content (pull technology) to more self publishing aka social media and collaboration. (push technology). Three major educational methodologies have emerged and when used effectively, give teachers powerful new ways to present content, engage and interact with students.  Student feedback can be easily managed which makes more effective formative assessment possible.

Teachers often use the terms  “podcast” “webcast” and “webinar” interchangeably and yes there is some overlap, but each of these online teaching methods has particular strengths and when used effectively can improve learning outcomes. We will identify the strengths of a:

• • Podcast: a digital audio file made available online for downloading, typically in a series of instalments.
  • Webcast: a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers.
  • Webinar: a seminar or other presentation that takes place on the Internet, allowing participants in different locations to ask questions and make comments

Video content use is increasing. By 2019, video will be responsible for 80 percent of internet traffic around the world. Expect users to share almost one million minutes of video content every second by 2019. Thus, it’s no surprise Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg projects that video will be the most shared content on Facebook within in the next five years. We will introduce some of the latest video creation, editing and streaming technologies which give teachers powerful tools to help learning.