I recently discovered a cool tool for teaching- TouchCast. A TouchCast is an interactive video; meaning there is a background video and things popup that can be touched and opened up.

I made a Touchcast on case-control studies. Check it out and see what I mean. Make sure you touch one of the YouTube videos or the web site that I put on the screen to see how it works.

I find this very exciting. I can make a background video that gives a 30,000 foot view of a topic and embed further materials (other videos, websites, etc) for those that want a deeper understanding.

So what are the limitations? For now the interactivity is limited to viewing a TouchCast via their app or their website for the interactive functionality. The videos can be uploaded to YouTube but the interactivity is lost. The length of the video is also limited to 5 or 6 minutes. This isn’t a killer for me because educational videos should be short and in this case I can embed hours of other videos if I wanted to. Finally, the other limitiation (for now, will be changed soon) is that its an iPad tool. A desktop version is coming soon. Hopefully an Android app also.

TouchCast has really broken ground here. This should open up more advancements that will do even more. The future is exciting for us flipped classroom types.