In your blog create a reflection titled “Web-Conferencing” and discuss how the video conference went, what software you used, and what you would do differently next time. Also explain how this might be useful in your classroom.We had our first web conferencing session on Thursday, May 28 at 8 pm. Michigan time. We used Vyew. The conference went pretty good despite a number of glitches to start with. First, scheduling was complicated due to our busy schedules and being on the opposite side of the world from one of our group-mates. We then discovered a number of technical difficulties with feedback from microphones (solved by having only one person on at a time), pages appearing and disappearing, not all members being able to see the screen sharing and strange incidents of text doubling and tripling as we all were contributing to a document (we just had to live with that and clean it up later). We also had a few of us who were spontaneously logged out of the conference and then had to come back in. As we started our conference we found out that Vyew does not record the session for us to include in our blogs (although the meeting notes and everything are still there to go back to so that's nice).
I'm not sure what I would do differently next time. I think a lot of the issues we had were because of our inexperience with the program, some program issues and maybe some individual computer issues. Since we had our conference prior to the email recommending using Adobe maybe we would try that program for a future web conference as it sounds like it works better.
I think this technology could be useful in the classroom if a high school student was working at home (ill/homebound etc.) and needed help or tutoring. This could work between teacher/student or between students. Next year my only students using technology on a regular basis will be 5th/6th graders who I have been told have very little computer experience so I'm not sure that this would be something that they could do on their own. I could see some possibilities of having a guest speaker present through web conferencing though which would give them an idea of what is possible and maybe letting students interact with the speaker.
Sorry to hear that your Vyew experience was filled with so many technology glitches. It sounds like your group did a wonderful job of working around them, though=8-) I totally agree with you! Web Conferencing with younger students needs to be a teacher directed activity. Last year, as a part of a global project, my students Skyped (Video conference call) with classrooms in Canada and New York. Us teachers set up the meeting time, placed the call, then allowed the students to talk and share project ideas with each other. The kids had a great time.
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