Comments on Google Campus Talks?

• Get 80% of the effect with 20% of the effort.
• Posted by Brian Mulligan , Registrar's Office at institute of Technology Sligo on December 4, 2009 at 7:15am EST

• Dump the camera. Just capture the screen and audio. Why not add desktop sharing, webcasting and recording (direct to Youtube?) to Google Video and there you have it. I'd be surprised if they are not looking at this already.

• Please don't forget captioning in all of this!
• Posted by Tina Passman , Assoc. Prof., Modern Languages & Classics at University of Maine on December 4, 2009 at 7:45am EST

• I love this idea - and let's not forget that 508 compliance makes life better for everyone! A captioned lecture or talk opens up the content not just to those with hearing impairments, but anyone who has difficulty, for any reason, in following the audio text. Speakers who may turn away from the mike or mumble, have an accent or slight speech impairment, can still be easily understood. Student learning is always reinforced by multiple delivery and redundancy. Google knows this well - captioning is easy now on YouTube, and many Google videos are captioned.

• Yes, and Add IDs
• Posted by Terry Calhoun at Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) on December 4, 2009 at 9:15am EST

• Great idea. Hope we can get people to do it. And, following a thought I heard from John Hammang of AASCU earlier this week at the annual meeting of the Higher Education Associations Sustainability Consortium (HEASC) be sure to "tag" the presentation with a unique institutional identified like Unit ID.

• But what's a "lecture circuit" for if not...
• Posted by vfichera on December 4, 2009 at 11:00am EST

• ...to short-circuit such "captures"? Indeed, many a high-priced lecturer (politicians, etc.) not only deliver essentially the same lecture at multiple campuses but actually request -- and receive, apparently -- permission to limit the right of the audience members to pose questions. So, in the ivory tower citadels of learning where academic freedom of inquiry supposedly reigns supreme, the lecturer has pre-screened the questions even before arriving on campus.

  Therefore, one can only applaud the idea of such "captures" as effectively short-ciruiting the scam of these immense outlays by campuses and student organizations of tens of thousands of dollars per lecturer per campus for "canned speeches" that a Google or YouTube capture can make truly accessible to all.

• Rights
• Posted by Jim , Media at JJC/LLCC on December 4, 2009 at 11:15am EST

• Who owns the rights to these presentations?

• At what point do we say "no thanks" to Google?
• Posted by hal2k , digital media consultant/design grad student at north carolina state university on December 4, 2009 at 2:45pm EST

• I think I am at that point now. Everything in Google is focused on searching. Everything. I have no faith that Google will be able to avoid the temptation to datamine all the information that people have freely given Google access to in ways that users had not intended. There is nothing that people will be able to do about it. The cat is out of the bag.

  It isn't a win-win. Google gives people access to watered-down online tools, and in turn get access to all the hard work that people have put into their life's work. An hour lecture may have taken a presenter a year to realize. Sometimes free access trivializes the commitment that people put into their work. It is hard for people to understand that a black and white geometric painting could actually take someone a month or more to produce. Hey! I could do that in an afternoon! The answers are - Nope! You probably couldn't, and if you could, you would have already done it.

  I am not saying that copyright laws as they stand are ducky. They are killing us intellectually. But there is a middle ground where researchers, artists, writers should see some benefit for their work outside of a pithy comment in a YouTube comments section.

  This is the irony of "free culture". Ultimately it isn't free. Someone loses, some one wins. In this case it is Google and the university who wins; Google can generate more ad revenue from some one's life work, and Universities can treat faculty work as "work for hire", which means the university, not the faculty, owns not just their lecture content, but potentially all research that is generated from their work at the university. Suddenly, there is no incentive for the faculty member to work in this environment beyond a paycheck. I like the idea of "free culture', and I benefit from it myself. It is case that I have become aware over the last few years how hard some things are to accomplish, and the audience doesn't necessarily understand or appreciate that work. They only see the artifact. A good movie can take a couple of years to realize, but can be watched in 90 minutes.

  So - no thanks Google. Let me choose what I want to put online. I don't want to use your tools, with the implicit agreement that I am abdicating control over my hard work. Let me make that decision myself, let me choose what I want to share, what I want to give away. The pressure will be too great for universities to force faculty to hand over that right.