Back to the Drawing Board....

So to speak! I gave Sketchcast a look yesterday. It allows users to use their mouse as a pen to write/draw on a virtual pad and add voice.

In theory this is a great idea; I was pretty excited to find it, as our Physics teacher had asked me about doing podcasts. All he needed was to show his "board work," and discuss it, so this would have been a fantastic tool. And our math teachers would have gone nuts over this.

Just one thing. It doesn't work.

I tried it on both my Windows machine at work and my Mac at home. I could draw fine, but could neither hear any audio on the samples, nor add audio to mine. You could even read "where's the sound" comments on various sketches. When I clicked on the "allow" button for the audio, it started whirring and never stopped. When I used their contact forum to email, that didn't work, either.

Hmmm... It seems like they were a little to eager to go public. As I said, back to the drawing board...

But give it a look. If you get it to work, let me know what you did!

SketchCasting: How Cool Is That?

Ewan McIntosh posted about sketchcasting today, and caught my interest. Basically, sketchcasting mashes blogging with podcasting, only instead of words, you draw out your concepts, as a teacher would on a whiteboard. The possibilities for online tutorials, visual learners, etc. seem really promising, especially in math/science, which (I assume!) rely heavily on diagrams, formula manipulation, etc. Here's the introductory video, but you can also view the "how to" on YouTube.