The Webcast Academy

Overview
The goals of the Webcast Academy include

• increasing the number of people who are capable of producing live, interactive webcasts
  
• applying the open source community approach to skill development
• creating a place that formally recognizes proficiency,  excellence, and innovation  in these new media skills

It is our hope that those who complete an apprenticeship here, will put their skills to use on the Worldbriges Webcasting Network and elsewhere, but there is no charge for participation and no formal commitment required following the completion of the internship.

To keep things manageable in terms session administration, server resources, and security, we can only accept 15 interns for each session.   Upon successful completion of their  3 interncasts and a 'commencement webcast',  interns will receive a Worldbridges Webcaster Proficiency Certificate and become a Worldbridges Webcasting License. 

Interns will need to spend at least 3~5 hours a week working on developing the necessary skills, working with other members of their 'channel', and banging their heads against their monitors.  Eventually, intern station managers will be broken into 5 groups (or channels). One of the stations managers in each group will serve as Channel Director.  The Channel Director will be responsible for scheduling and posting information about group webcasts on the calendar.

 Interns will be the only ones with direct access to the Worldbridges webcasting streams, but everyone is welcome to participate in other ways - posting in the discussion forums, commenting on posts, contributing to the Book of Webcasting, and learning along with the apprentices. 

How to become an intern
If you are interesting in becoming a webcast intern for session1.1 , please do the following:

• Register with webcastacademy.net and completely fill out the 'apprentice' portion of your profile. 
• Download everthing in the Webcaster Kit
• Watch the Screen capture videos (uploading soon) of how to webcast using various streaming tools
• If at all possible, get a desktop USB mic (not a USB headset). This is the type we've been using.  We have had much more success webcasting (capturing both ends of a telephony call) with a USB mic than with a standard mic.
  

Below is a tentative outline of our schedule.  This is flexible and will be adjusted to suit our collective learning needs.  Throughout the session, apprentices will post audio from their webcasts to the site,  post blog entries to their 'Apprentice Journal', and contribute to the Book of Webcasting1.1.

Week#1
Task #1 - Give it your first shot (Download what you need, take a shot at going live on Demo Channel).  This can be done during the Open House or during webcasts later in the week (if spaces are left).
Following the Open House , take a piece of raw audio (hopefully part in which you particpated).  Tweak and edit it, including at least a quick intro along the lines of  'this is a piece of audio from .....'

Use Camtasia (Windows) or XXX(Mac) to create a screen capture video showing how you  edited it.

Post both the audio clip and the screen capture to the internet and post the link in your Webcast Academy Profile.

  Week#2
Discuss and Practice the following skills:

• Capturing audio from both ends of a telephony call
• Smoothly bringing people in and out of a telephony confernece

We will probably start with a whole group discussion, but then break in to OS based groups to focus on OS-specific details.
Following these discussions, each station manager will 'give it another shot' and test their setup.

We will then break into 'channel' groups.  Work with your group to plan a 20 minute show for next weekend.   When you have decided on a show time, please post it on the WCA and Worldbirdges Calendar.

Week 3

Listen to Group Webcasts. Discussion lessons learned.

Address some of the finer points of editing audio - Possible guest  experts