Week 2: Virtual Conference Orientation

This week was not without it's challenges!

During the week I anticipated that participants would explore Web2 tools, discuss their discoveries in the forum and start a blog to record their learning. To facilitate this I created a wiki page called Useful Links. I sub-divided the page into categories, e.g. blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc. Within each sub-division was an explanation of of the tool (often a link to Commoncraft video) and a series of links to the tools within each category e.g. Blogger, Wordpress, Edublog, etc.

What happened?

Lots of independent exploration, a little forum sharing and a couple of blogs. Not bad!!!

The conference session

We had more than our fair share of technical issues: some people too loud; some too soft; one couldn't get in at all; one person's browser functionality didn't work (so no web tours for her!); a couple of people couldn't use the whiteboard; and the private text messaging seemed to work for some and not for others. The result was that we started about twenty minutes late. Of course, this impacted on the session and unfortunately not everyone was able to contribute to the discussion. I also felt we ended rather abruptly as, naturally, people had to leave on time.

During the session we looked at the various ways of communicating in the room, we used the whiteboard a little and went for quick web tour. The highlight of the session was that each participant gave a short account of their e-learning adventures during the preceding week. Below is a list of the tools which were investigated by the group, the reason they might be useful and any other comments which were made:

- Blogs as a learning journal
- Google Docs for document sharing
- Teacher Tube to access lesson plan videos
- e-Portfolios to store resumes, to document personal goals or as a place for students to plan their learning
- Edna virtual conferencing
- Ning - a dummy course was set up with a view to creating a Digital Photography course. The hope was to upload photos and create slide shows. The downside of Ning was thought to be the advertisements.
- Moodle (our LMS). The comments were that Moodle is too complex/sophisticated for beginners (i.e. teachers) and has too many layers - but is probably easier than Ning for students to navigate.
- Studios - another LMS which has free hosting.
- Discovere (our virtual conference room) - could used for non-English speaking background students to practice speaking and listening or for mindmapping
- Moodle, The Well and Edna forums - to see what the conversations look like. One participant joined a forum another commented that they seemed user-friendly.
- LinkedIn for professional exposure.

That's quite a list in just one week!

What would I do differently next time?

1. I have never experienced such a high number of technical issues. Next time I might make a time to meet with each individual to resolve any issues before the first online meeting. It's off-putting for people to see that level of technical difficulty. The thought is likely to be 'how could I deal with that?'

2. Those issues resolved I would start on time and introduce participant presentations earlier so that everyone could speak. If we still ran over time the web tour or the whiteboard activity could be conducted in a later session.

3. My concept for this program was to give people the freedom to choose what to explore. Now I am beginning to think that perhaps I have provided too much information. A couple of people have commented on feeling overwhelmed. (Actually, I'm still overwhelmed myself - but I think I'm just used to that feeling!) However a better strategy may have been to spend more time with individuals at the EOI stage and establish what individual needs may be and then allocate a tool or two to each person. Time will tell and I plan to check on this in the review process.

4. I also uploaded a series of documents containing guidelines and instructions which may be helpful throughout the program. Possibly too much too soon.

So, on we go. This week's tasks are to contribute to the forum and complete the setting of up a blog. Next week in our virtual conference session we look forward to a guest presenter who will tell us her online story and demonstrate using the whiteboard.