Livestreaming Faceoff: @FacebookLive @PeriscopeTV @GoogleHangouts On Air

Editor's note: HT to @Mr_Casal the purveyor of geekery who reviewed and revised this post to help ensure it was technically accurate.

Livestreaming has been around for awhile making it's debut with platforms like UStream and Livestream. While those platforms were powerful, they didn't take off like the next wave of livestreaming platforms which have advantages of being ad free, cost free, and a built in audience.

Livestreaming's day has finally come and every innovative educator should begin exploring the power of the stream to provide students with meaningful and real learning experiences. In this post we look at three major streaming providers vying for you (there are many others…) and I provide my take on which platform is best for what you are trying to do.  

Periscope

Periscope is a cool app where the account holder/broadcaster shares what they are experiencing or doing. Periscope allows viewers to write comments that appear in the livestream providing a great platform for those recording to speak to their audience.

What I like

One feature I like about Periscope is that it is integrated with Twitter, so you just log in to Periscope with your Twitter credentials.  You livestream from your phone and it posts directly to your Twitter account. It’s IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER TO USE HASHTAGS. This way your livestream goes not just to your followers, but to anyone interested in the topic about which you are streaming. This means when you go live you’ll always have people watching you live. What I also like is that if you are viewing a stream you can tap the screen and hearts will appear to show your support for what you are viewing. What I also like is that viewers can comment and those comments can be moderated. In addition, once the broadcast is complete the app will give you some minor analytics; duration of broadcast, number of viewers, viewers Twitter handles if applicable, average view time, etc. They are not deep analytics but they are great to use as teaching points when discussing audience and reach.

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