The second major part of that announcement was a very powerful set of captioning tools that will make captioning much easier. For example, you can upload the script of the video, and Google will automatically sync the captions to the audio. (Using speech analysis with a script is much more precise than without). Or, you can go ahead and let Google do it’s best guess at writing the captions itself, and then go in and fix errors – obviously, both of these are preferable to the current situation.

It’s really really exciting. I honestly didn’t expect that the captioning problem would ever get a satisfactory solution, so seeing Google announce these free tools is just amazing. I expect that we will very soon see much larger percantages of videos with captions than ever before, and with better captions than ever before.

One quote really got me:

” Sure, students are supposed to use the iPods for their class projects, but who will be the wiser if they shoot off an email or a tweet to their friends, or just surf the Web aimlessly instead of doing their work? ”

This is so silly…when I was a kid – a million years ago – I used to play with my “mechanical pencil” making believe it was a rocket ship. The reason for doing this was likely the same reason a student today would choose (actively or passively) to “play” with their technology tools instead of using them for their intended purpose. I was bored! And despite the expansiveness and expensiveness of today’s teaching/learning tools, kids will drift off when the learning environment is not stimulating.

PS: I think I still have that Pentel p207