4. Surfcasting
Yesterday we looked at a tool that could help increase the fluency with which people write in Hebrew on the Web. Today, we’re going to look at a different tool that can help create more free educational opportunities for those interested in self-directed Jewish learning online.
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Screencasting — that is, capturing video from one’s computer screen and sharing it with others — is an increasingly popular means of creating online tutorials, thanks to the advent of tools like Jing and Little Snapper. And it’s a great method for those who wish to use their computer like a SMART Board, creating visually compelling lessons for those, not in a classroom, but scattered across the Web.
But I do find there to be certain issues that make screencasting a less than an ideal medium. For instance, you can’t copy and paste text or a URL from a Web page shown in a screencast. Nor can you go back and edit a screencast without video editing software and knowledge of using said software. Screencasts, because they’re like television and movies, are also a passive learning experience: You sit there and watch, rather than getting involved in the learning.
A couple of years ago, I had an idea for an alternative method, one I call surfcasting: Capture a Web browser session along with mouse movements (clicks, highlighting), user contributed instructional text, audio and video, and make it editable. Then, provide a pop-up window through which students can control the playback. Such a guided Web surfing session would allow end-users to see the actual, full-resolution Web page loaded by the instructor, copy and paste text from that page, bookmark it if so desired, flip back and forth between pages so that they could learn at their own pace, and to contribute additional material to the tutorial collaboratively. It could also incorporate form elements which ask students questions during the lesson.
So, for example, say you wanted to give a lesson in 20th Century Jewish Anarchism: You could create a surfcast that flips from Wikipedia, to YouTube, to the Jewish Women’s Archive, and so on, highlighting bits of text and providing voice overs on each page.
The end product would look a little something like this:
(Yes, that’s an Emma Goldman finger puppet.)
While exploring the potential of using such an application on another project some months ago, I took the idea to a friend of mine at a software development company and after inquiring of its potential, one of his colleagues said “I think I’ve seen that before." He then pointed me at Amberjack and I died a little on the inside. (Just kidding.)
Amberjack is a great solution and does 4/5ths of what I proposed with my surfcasting idea (be sure to check out the demos on the homepage). It does not track mouse movements, however, and it currently works only on one’s own Web site upon which the Amberjack source code must be installed. But the good news is that whereas it is an open source application, Amberjack can be improved upon by outside developers.
So other than adding mouse-tracking and the ability to use it Web-wide, how would I make Amberjack better? By adding a social dimension. Amberjack is great for creating tours of one’s own Web site. But it doesn’t have a social component that can help take it beyond that provincial use.
I would add a lesson exchange: a front-end where users can save and publish their tutorials to share with other users, who can then search for and rate the best presentations. In addition, users could clone existing tutorials and modify them with their own contributions, thereby collaboratively creating the most expansive and informed lessons possible. I would then spin-off niche versions of the site for various markets, one of course being the Jewish educational market.
What might this look like?
In the end, by expanding upon the concept of Amberjack in this way, one could create an online school of sorts that utilizes the two best resources we have at our disposal: free Web content and the knowledge of our fellow human beings.
As I’ve said before and as I’ll say many more times before the end of the month is through, in an era where formal Jewish education is prohibitively expensive, Web-based tools like these are needed more and more to fill the gap. Surfcasting is a no-brainer, and thanks to Amberjack, we’re already most of the way there.
Tomorrow, helping folks (such as those who want to craft lessons using a tool like this) find the best Jewish educational content online…
