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…That’s the question. At least for today.
A colleague asked for my opinions on the use of video of teachers providing live instruction. My feedback was – that depends! I think video is great to:

• Instruction in skills that have a physical component (e.g. setting up lab equipment)
• Show motion-based content (e.g. demonstrating strike-slip faults in Earth Science)
• The content is a speech – and not “instruction” per se
• Content is regarding interpersonal relationships (i.e. soft-skills training)

Otherwise, I frequently find video to be a distracting medium. Here is another example – no disrespect intended, but a.) most of this would be much more effective in a text modality and b.) the lecturer reminded me SO much of John Malkovich that I would never be able to focus on the content he was delivering.

Unless you are using the modality to inspire (see Randy Pausch’s last lecture) the lecture – as an instructional method – is boring.

So – I ask you, dear reader – can you think of any GOOD reasons to video and broadcast lectures?

Ok – I really like(d) iGoogle. I get it. You can create a page with widgets that complete customize and populate your homepage with everything you need/want on a daily basis. But if you have used iGoogle you may have found it – as I have – to be rather clunky and slow to load. I’m not entirely sure why – though I suppose it is due to all of the API’s fighting with your browser to display their important info.

Me? I’ve switched to using a Google site as my home page. I have populated the left-hand nav with a text box that houses all of my most frequently used links. I plugged in a To Do list widget in a Dashboard page, along with my Google calendar. I then synched my Google calendar with my work Outlook email and added that to the Dashboard – last step was to make the Dashboard page be the landing page for the site (see Site Settings>>Other Stuff).

So – iGoogle was disappointing for me – but at least Google provided the next best thing!

Do you have a better way to organize your important daily stuff? Let me – and the other readers – know! Post!