As I say at the top of this post: http://tipline.blogspot.com/2008/02/coveritlive-blogging-session.html, "I can't let Karl Fisch have all the fun. I HAD to try CoverItLive for myself. The results, in a word - outstanding!

On Tuesday, March 4th, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to again present the opening remarks for a day of sharing and collaboration with about 180 science teachers from the area. It was the same presentation I gave before, but with a little twist. This time I had set up a CoverItLive session and posted it in the above blog post. Those of you who rely on the listserv to get my tips would not have seen it, but those who read the feed would have. What's cool about it is that for the days and hours leading up to the actual event, it presents you with a field in which you can enter your email address to receive an email alert that this live blogging will occur. Very nice.

I had set it up and then the day before it was to happen I skyped a call with Sue Sheffer (you may remember her from all the things that she passes along to me to share with you) and I gave her my CoverItLive password. We practiced with it for a while so that she could get used to how to moderate the discussion/comment posts, and she was ready to go.

At the start of the presentation on Tuesday I informed the other coaches in the room that if they wanted to try it they could do so by going to my blog post, etc. And then I began the talk while Sue started the CoverItLive session. The point of this was two fold. First, I wanted the coaches to see how this worked in a real setting, in case they were interested in trying it with a teacher or two. Second, I wanted to provide it as the 'backchannel' to my remarks. Knowing that this would become a permanent part of the blog I was hoping for some good dialog - and I got it. Check it out, if you've got some time.

Then, after the session was over I received an email from CoverItLive saying that they're going to be making a VERY nice improvement to the service. You'll be able to specify certain users as "Panelists" so that their comments will not need to be moderated. VERY nice!

In any case, check this out. It worked VERY well, and was VERY easy to use. I dn't think Sue used any polls or anything, but those are options. And, you can go into a "Prep" folder and add music clips and iamges and lots of other things so that you'll have them during the event. Also VERY COOL!!!

Let me know what you think.