Qwiki - making exciting multimedia presentations quickly!

We'll be exploring the ideas of Herbert Kohl this year when we get back to school in August. I decided to experiment with Qwiki: "the best way to share anything"!

The Qwiki website offers a quick and free sign up, brief tutorials, and samples from other users.
It is so simple to use that students can easily figure it out on their own.

The best part is that videos you make are interactive and easily shared.
embed web links, flickr photos, instagram, tweets, video from Vimeo or YouTube, almost any file from your computer, any web page including maps.
Share out on Twitter, Facebook, email or embed the presentation in a blog with html code.

I can imagine that we can do short "how to" library tutorials using screenshots and voiceovers ( or webcam) to teach some basics on Noodletools or logins or even iPad help.  Then we can embed these into a LibGuide.  I am very excited about the possibilities.

Play the Qwiki: Growing Minds: On Becoming a Teacher

Qwiki Alpha - Information Experience

Qwiki is launching soon. Want to be the first to have the information experience? Join their invite-only alpha, to help make Qwiki great.


Qwiki at TechCrunch Disrupt from Qwiki on Vimeo.
Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch explains how it works:

"The service scours many information sites on the Web, mostly Wikipedia, but also LinkedIn, Google Maps, Fotopedia, and CrunchBase, and creates a Qwiki that you can watch about that topic. A Qwiki looks like a narrated video, with matching images popping up as a female speech-to-text voice tells you about the topic you’ve chosen. All of this is done algorithmically. It is not reading any one given entry in Wikipedia or anywhere else, but rather summarizing that information first and then presenting it in a brief and very visual way.

After each Qwiki is completed, you are presented with a selection of related Qwikis so that you can keep on exploring. Of course, there is also the search box. Currently, there are Qwikis for about 3 million topics and growing. This is still a private alpha though, and if you do sign up, you will be asked to provide feedback after each Qwiki so they can improve them before opening up the service to the public in a few months."

Pretty amazing. The voice is somewhat annoying and I would probably rather use Mashpedia, but I am still wowed by the technology. I signed up for the private alpha and they sent an email stating that I should look forward to login information soon.