Had our first group meeting this morning. The people were lovely, the subject of discussion engaging, the technology, well, the technology was doing something....
We decided to use Vyew, which I had suggested to use. I had gone to their website and went through their full tutorial and it seemed to be a dandy thing, but after really working with it this morning I have more mixed feelings.
It started with things on my end (I think) when the internet connection that I had anticipated having was not what I was told it was going to be. I had echo issues with my mic, and issues syncing and in the end the program crashed on me twice. This I chalk up to the connection because I have never had video chat problems before this and I have the latest edition of Flash. After that, I decided to stick with the chat end of the meeting and just listen to the audio and comment along.
Given that the chat was my main line of communication, having just a little tiny box was less than great and their was no way to hide the user box to expand the chat area. I found that scrolling up and down to read what was being posted was very 'clunky' and that it was difficult to find exactly what you were looking for. Also, I did not see a way to put in a hyperlink which was disappointing.I did upload a document which automatically created a new page which was nice.
It was not a bad program, but I see it as more of a document collaboration program, for instance if you were going through a contract etc., but I am not sure if this is the best for what we are going to be doing, although it would be hard to say, given that our situation would different. For instance I will be back home so the chat feature would not be as necessary, but we will be story-boarding so I wonder if that will transfer well. Perhaps next time we will need to find a different program that will allow for more graphics manipulation.
Overall I can see how web-conferencing would be great to incorporate in the classroom. I know that some teachers use it to hold meetings with the authors of the books that kids are reading, and I can see numerous similar applications such as chatting with elected officials or other special speakers that may not be currently in the area. I can also see teachers using this tool to create collaboration projects between their school/students and students and schools elsewhere (anywhere!) And while it wouldn't have to be this particular tool, I can see web conferencing as a means to the end of the "our project isn't finished because we couldn't meet after school/johnny can't get a ride/etc" issue. This technology means that students can stay up working together until 2 am if they need to. I'm not saying they should, but it could help alleviate some of the typical due-date headaches.
Loved the 2 am comment=8-) Kind of reminds me of my night owl-like son. He still stays up until the wee hours of the morning and sleeps late. Back to the comment - you are spot on! Web conferencing tools allow people to work collaboratively on projects 24/7. Last year my students and I used Skype to video conference with classrooms in Canada and New York on a global project we were working on. My students talked to their counter parts on project details and next steps. We even shared our finished products with each other. The kids had a great time.
ReplyDelete