Inside View: Inviting Alexa into the classroom #ictedu

WE'RE INVITING the Amazon Echo Dot into several multimedia tutorial sessions to learn more about tools that favour immersive classrooms. And a surprising thing has happened--the students have accelerated post-production workflow of the 360 video recording that we create during some of the sessions.

I've experimented with the Amazon Echo Dot in Ireland for the past fortnight, learning how to make it work in Ireland by side loading apps on Android and iOS. This is an essential work-around that I'm showing to several cohorts of students who take animation, business and multimedia modules from me this semester. The ideas are supported by dozens of clever people inside a Facebook Group of Irish members. I think it's important to know how to leverage personal technology and the Amazon Echo makes it a lot of fun--as you can hear in the YouTube clip below.

The Echo Dot looks a little strange because the Ricoh Theta S camera was sitting on top of it. I edited the clip in Camtasia Studio to remove my hands from the start and the finish. I used Ricoh's Equirectangular conversion tool to create a canvas suitable for editing and uploading to both Facebook and YouTube. You may need to view the clip on YouTube if you want to see the video in 360 format.

We're experimenting with various tools and flavours of technology while writing content to be used to promote the ICT in Education Conference set for Saturday the sixth of May 2017 on the Thurles campus of the Limerick Institute of Technology. Stay tuned to the audio and blog updates that will flow from my InsideView.ie blog.

[Bernie Goldbach teaches creative students in the Limerick Institute of Technology and he helps organise the annual ICT in Education Conference. #ictedu ]