Skypecasts Update

A couple of weeks ago I tried a Skypecast with about 8 faculty members to show them the possibilities for using this to connect with their students or as a suggestion for how the students could connect with one another.

When Skypecasts were first introduced, I found them to be an effective and fun way to communicate with groups of up to about 25 people. It is possible to have up to 100 people on a single Skypecast, but I've never been involved with one that approached that number.

Things have changed quite a bit since the early days of the Skypecasts. If you want to set up a Skypecast and expect it to be useful to you and your audience, then I STRONGLY SUGGEST that you set it up as a PRIVATE Skypecast. You then need to send an email to your intended audience members with a URL to the hidden Skypecast. Anyone with the URL can join the Skypecast, but no one else will find it. It won't be shown in the Skypecast listings for the day.

If you host a public Skyepcast, you can expect every nutjob with a microphone to click in and share their two cents about whatever disgusting thing they might have on their minds at the time. The technology works as it was designed, but the humans are malfunctioning at a very high rate. Try a private Skypecast, and enjoy.