In order to attract teens to continue their education after the compulsory leaving age, one tactic is to hold open days where prospective students can get a taste of what life at our vocational college is like. Last year we attempted to run a continuous radio show on Ustream relying on live talk and invited studio guests. This year we ratched up a little and decided to go visual and run a non-stop TV station. In my mind video adds more complications and layers than audio.
This year I had the advantage of knowing in advance that I would have my normal class to man the TV station whereas last year I had relied on volunteers who did not meet until the day itself. We could have stayed with Ustream but this year we decided to try Livestream formerly known as Mogulus (this is important to know if you are looking for support videos on YouTube). Even the free edition of Livestream offers some pretty sophisticated options including recording, screencasting and playing YouTube videos. There is even the option of capturing footage from a remote location. So the plan was to stream for the 5 hour duration of the Open Day.
In order to lessen the burden on the studio hosts the plan was that the class should pre-record several short videos interviewing staff and students on various aspects. We also made an appeal for video material from previous college events such as trips abroad. We even had copies of two commercials which go out in the local cinemas.
On the day itself we planned to also have guest interviews while small teams of roving reporters went out to film what was happening during Open Day itself such as the ever explosive Physics Show. After some quick rough and ready editing this would be handed over to our student technicians for uploading to the storyboard and would eventually be introduced by our studio hosts. In the free version of Livestream picture quality is not so good but I would argue that it is good enough. We also found it impossible to show the YouTube videos we had preloaded. No doubt there was a simple explanation for that but when you are in the middle of streaming you don’t really have the opportunity to troubleshoot.
We did not record any of the stream. Recording always makes additional demands on computer power and in any case it would not have been practical (or allowed in the free edition) to record 5 hours. I suspect that we could have started recording and discontinued it after a while but we didn’t try this.
Uploading video takes a very long time, about one and a half times the length of the recording, and so this meant that it was not practical to record anything too close to the end of the Open Day as there would be no chance to upload and show it. For example one Roving Reporter team recorded all 45 minutes of the Physics Show but in the end edited it down to a quick one minute montage of all the explosions in order to have a chance to show it on the stream (which probably had the greatest impact anyway).
In the end we had very little pre-recorded material to line up for showing on the day and this put a great deal of additional stress on the student technicians, roving reporters and studio hosts to fill the time so I must admit that there were gaps in the stream when we had to put a ‘Back shortly’ sign up. Why was this? A combination of the class not quite believing that they were 95% responsible for the event, a very tight timetable with few holes for rushing off to do interviews and perhaps a reluctance to put in the time after school instead. It may also help to get a second or third year class to do this instead of a first year class who are unfamiliar with what goes on during Open Day. So I would rate this a partial success with a great deal of potential for improvement. Livestream is an amazing free tool for such a project if a little complicated to master.