Communication Tools for Online Educators

Screen shot of the video recorder

(left screen is the recording view monitor. Right screen is playback monitor)
After instructor records a video, they can play it back. If they do not like what they recorded, they can re-record. If they are satisfied with the recording they "submit" the video. The submit button opens a webmail form that sends the URL to CyberCampus so that we can link the video player within the instructors course, to the Flash communication server video stream.

The reason I developed these two applications is to make the process of adding audio and video to an online course, as effortless as possible. I wanted to remove the obstacles: Time, travel and resources. Instructors don't have the time to research what software to use in order to be able to record audio or video, nor do they have the time to learn to use these types of software. It's also not realistic to expect that an instructor to learn how to encode and then transfer the files to a streaming or HTTP server, and then build a refference to the files (link) so that students can access them etc,. My experience from working at Universities over the years is that teaching is becoming more and more a part time job., which is to say that University teaching is less and less a full time profession. The effect is that teachers hold down two jobs, or as is the case at Golden Gate University, most all of the instructors are established working professionals who simply don't have the time to embrace the use of instructional technologies unless they are extremely easy to use and show clear evidence toward enhancing their course.