Thursday, April 5, 2012

Web Conferencing

Ok, so I finally got to try Google Hangouts for the web conferencing assignment.  I'd been looking for a good reason to try hangouts, and luckily, everyone in the group was on board.  The journey began last Thursday, March 29, where Bob and I got to hang out a little bit:
Due to a mixup with email addresses (my bad), Sharon got a little lost in the internet, and we weren't able to bring her in to this one.  Bob and I did try out the chat feature, although we couldn't really see a reason to use chat when you're talking...
On Friday March 30, Sharon and I were able to touch base and have a nice little hangout. 
Again, we were just getting our feet wet, but we talked about the assignment a little, and came up with the idea of trying to use Camtasia as our subject.

Finally, big day, on Sunday April 1st we were all able to get together.  Bob created a video of the meeting.

There were a few pitfalls to this technology, mainly that it's a little bit clunky to get into.  Also, I'm not sure if I'm a big fan of the big video for the person who's talking: this might be more useful for larger groups of people, but I think I would have rather just had everyone the same size (feels like a better format for a conversation to me).  
I can think of many ways this will be useful with my students, especially those who have illnesses that cause them to miss school periodically.  I tried it out with one of my students to check in over spring break, and she liked it, and we were able to complete a mini tutoring session.  I'm sure I'll use this more in the future, both in my professional life and my personal life.




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