TechTalk 004 – Hangouts-on-Air (HoA) the “Right” Way

This past week we held our fourth TechTalk of the year. TechTalk is a monthly show that focuses on specific digital texts or tools that should be used in your classroom. We view “classrooms” broadly as stretching from Pre-K up through 12th grade and into higher education. The show is meant to provide an easy, approachable overview of a tools, or series of tools, and then some dialogue about the use of these digital texts and tools in the classroom. We try to focus on the specific affordances, opportunities, and challenges of the digital text or tools.

This fourth episode examined the use of Hangouts-on-Air (HoA) for creating online shows, webcasts, netcasts, podcasts (insert your name here). We’ve spent a lot of time haggling over the choice of descriptor, but one thing is for certain, HoA is a great publishing, and broadcasting tool.

In this episode, I spent time with Annabelle Howard from your friends at Big Fun Education. I’ve been bugging Annabelle for some time because I’ve been bugging Annabelle for awhile to show me how she creates incredible learning events using online tools like HoA. We keep in touch online and offline and I’m always amazed at what she (and the folks from Big Fun Education) are able to do with Mystery Hangouts, and MACBETH GOES SOCIAL. You can find out about this, and more from the Big Fun Education G+ page.

Nevertheless, I’ve been creating more and more using HoA, and I want to identify and develop “best practices” for using these tools. As I mentioned before, Annabelle is doing some real cool stuff with HoA…and she’s making it look really good. I wanted to spend some time with her figuring out how she does it. At the end of our time together, I was left with some new tools I need to play with (PowToons), and new ideas for next steps.

The event page is available here. The video is embedded below.