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Ok. Webcams. A few things you need to know.
- The first thing is light. The webcam is a camera. Cameras need light or they just don’t work. So every webcam should come with a light source or have a light source near it that you can shine onto the webcam user. Otherwise your webcam will look like you took a photo in a dark room, or you didn’t use your flash and the open windows are very bright, and everyone in front of the window is a silhouette.
- If your webcam has auto focus, special effects and face tracking, these will work best with with good lighting. Otherwise it will focus on the wall behind you that is well lit.
- I've made a quick movie about this camera (follow the link) and you can see that in dark conditions the image is very blocky and distorted, and when the lights are turned on, the image (my fingers) becomes much clearer and the camera seems to have suddenly improved in quality, when in fact it is only the lighting.
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- The second thing you need is something you don't need. Sound. Disable any inbuilt omnidirectional microphone (one that picks up sound in every direction) or just don’t buy a webcam with a microphone included.
- Included microphones are wonderful for home use, when its just you in your study at home and there’s no extra noise to pick up. In a classroom, the softly spoken, shy student using the webcam is the last thing the inbuilt microphone will pick up. Mrs Smith next door screaming at Justin will be heard more clearly than the person sitting in front of the webcam.
- This webcam's microphone is unidirectional, meaning it can be 'pointed' at the sound source it needs to capture and send. This is a good webcam is you don't want to buy a separate microphone.
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- Third thing. Use decent software if you are doing a live chat with someone else. Decent can be free (Skype) or near-free. Some of the most expensive software is awful, and although it has established a high market share in hospital operation rooms, international board rooms, and badly faked demos of actors using the equipment beautifully, realise that it will probably crash and burn in a school environment. Schools have all sorts of switches and hubs, and most schools aren't even using the internet, but a managed internet service for education – which is really quite a different thing. Your software should have no more than a two second time lag, and should use technology to cancel echoes (so the microphone does not pick up sound coming from the speakers). It should also be easy (and free) for the other party to set up their computer system to talk to you.
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- I did a lot of work with webcams and video conferencing for a few years. So many of the applications we developed were just incredible and perfect solutions for the particular needs of some very isolated schools. One activity was young students copying the pattern of coloured blocks from another young student (they were the only pre-school children in their schoool, so this was a great way for them to learn together).
- It worked really well. So well that investors started coming along, and they went beyond their free software and $29 web cameras to a more ‘standard’ system that I won’t mention the name of. So a dodgy company sold the tiny, poor school community expensive equipment that they couldn't afford, and then couldn't get working. And it never worked, and everyone got sick of putting so much time and extra money into the idea that they dropped the concept all-together. Which was a shame, because the pedagogy had a lot of promise for something so simple.
- I suppose the moral of the story is to keep it simple. As long as you are getting what you need out of an activity to achieve your curriculum goals, you don’t need an over-kill of technology.
There are other bad things to watch out for.
- Para-professionals in schools wanting to use video to talk to students at night (I have seen it too much)
- Students not realising that video uses a lot of traffic, and if they are paying a traffic based internet plan, they’re going to get a shock later on
- Students recording videos and then never managing them, so they just hang around on computers and memory sticks without any purpose, taking up incredible amount of space on the network.
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- Consider face tracking technology, so the webcam uses its regular field of view and follows your face. This is great, as us humans tend to move our faces around quite a bit, and unless you are keeping a good track on your video signal, you’re probably sending out your bald spot, double chin or cleavage.
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- There are some great things you can do with webcams. You can use fun technology to turn your face into animated characters, or add live digital features to your image (like a pirate hat, very funny, but only works well when you have good light on your face). These little tricks and snippets of ideas can be mixed with other student media, so you can explore all of the possibilities of your webcam, and mix and match your ideas to make a great finished product.
- A webcam will come with a standard lens, but you can buy alternative lenses for special effects (fish eye), lenses more suitable to capture groups (wide angle) or lenses suitable for close up images (macro). Just because your webcam cost $8 doesn’t mean you can’t use it for a broad range of classroom applications.
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- Of course another application to webcams is security. It’s not appropriate to film students and / or teachers without their consent, but you can easily justify the use of motion activated security cameras to ensure student safety. You can get free software to do this task easily, and you can easily buy night vision cameras to capture night-time events. Another wonderful use of security cameras is to track wildlife and natural events at night. Like spying on a possum and its family, finding out where the stray cat sleeps, or seeing exactly what is upsetting the school’s chickens at night.
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- Claymation. Read my opinion of claymation here.
- Video Conferencing is the discussed here.
Links to the Shop
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