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CoverItLive (The Other Conversation)

June 26, 2008 As a conference speaker, one often wonders what people think about your presentation. Thanks to Bud "BudTheTeacher" Hunt and Cover It Live, I can replay the buzzing in the crowd from a recent presentation I made to the Colorado Association of School Libraries (CASL).

Cover It Live is a site that provides a chat room-like interface for live blogging an event. Like a chat room, text that is entered in a bottom pane is displayed with a time stamp and author attribution in the main window. Multiple users can be blogging the event at once as approved authors with additional moderated comments from guests. The entire event is logged and archived on the site for later replay; here is the replay of the CASL coverage that Bud facilitated. 

I greatly enjoyed having access to the Cover It Live site as a way to reflect and comment during the morning workshop, but it was also interesting to know that the same reflections and comments were taking place during my talk. There is a certain level of transparency and honesty to this that some might find uncomfortable. I am thinking that I need to redesign my slides to have a space in the corner for a floating window to encourage this secondary conversation as a part of the presentation!

As can be seen in the CASL replay, this tool is also a great way to provide access to the experience for those who were unable to be physically present for the conference. Conference planners need not worry - those who can make it to the event will still be there because of the much richer interactive experience provided by conversations in hallways and over meals - but this provides an opportunity for additional attendance. While I shudder to think about a charge for virtual attendance at a conference, a modest fee ($49?) for access to virtual coverage from AASL would be a great way to get more school librarians involved in the conversations [Yes, this is suggestion for the AASL 2.0 Task Force].

But don't wait for someone else to figure this out! You can get started with Cover It Live's free service in your library right away. Think about it: this is a chat room with automatic logging and the chance to moderate comments before they appear! Just what schools need to get around the safety and security issues that come with traditional chat rooms. Why not host a virtual book talk over the summer using this tool? Or tap your colleague who is going to a conference to be the on-the-scene recorder to bring the experience back to your district. This is certainly an idea we will be exploring at ALA this next week.

Posted by Chris Harris on June 26, 2008 | Comments (1)