Principal's Coffee Chat Innovation - Live Streaming

This year, from the opening meeting and throughout informal conversations, we have encouraged our teachers to take-risks with their instructional design and innovative ideas.  Essentially, we have given teachers a license to take-risks in the classroom.

I acknowledge many parents are simply unable to attend any school event at 8 AM on a Tuesday, especially our Principal's Coffee Chats.  Therefore, I have been reflecting on how to provide opportunities for a broader audience to attend and accommodate more of our Lake Norman Charter High School parents, without negatively impacting those parents who are able to attend regularly.

In an attempt to model risk-taking, I am venturing into an innovative approach to our October 4th Principal's Coffee Chat.  For the first time in school history, I will be LIVE STREAMING the Coffee Chat to the public through Periscope.  Periscope is a streaming application that allows any Twitter user to publicly broadcast an event, live.

C/o Periscope on the App Store

How does it work?

I will tweet the link once the chat begins.  The link is not able to be shared prior to the beginning of the streaming.  Therefore, to view the live stream, you would need to access my Twitter account: @CSmithGoBlue.

Viewers will be able to watch and listen to the broadcast on the web or their Twitter timeline by simply clicking the link or expanding the tweet.  You can access Twitter without actually having a Twitter account, just as you would access any site: www.twitter.com/CSmithGoBlue.

It is my understanding that users will be able to replay the broadcast by accessing the same link on my Twitter page.

(Source: https://help.periscope.tv/customer/en/portal/articles/2017789-who-can-see-my-broadcasts-)

As with any risk, this could be a tremendous success or a complete failure (By the way, we considered "failures" to be growth opportunities & learning experiences).  The October 4th Principal's Coffee Chat will be my first experience live streaming with Periscope with the help of our technology department.  If the stream is able to be archived (which is TBD), it will allow families to "attend" the Coffee Chat at their own convenience.

Parents: Excited to share I'll be LIVE STREAMING the Oct 4 Principal's Coffee Chat w/ @periscopeco! More details coming in blog form soon.

— Craig Smith (@CSmithGoBlue) September 21, 2016

I am very excited about the potential future utilization of Periscope and appreciate in advance the willingness to be patient while any issues are worked out throughout the process.

Update 9/28/16:

Test run:

LIVE on #Periscope https://t.co/KwzfKDvy7W

— Craig Smith (@CSmithGoBlue) September 28, 2016

Thank you for viewing,

CS

The opinions shared in this blog belong to Craig Smith and do not represent the school or district in which he works.