I took part in my very first ever “webinar” today at http://live.classroom20.com, and just the experience of working with the conferencing interface brought home to me how very different a remote live online session is. Granted, it was great to hear and read what the other participants were saying. My mind, my eyes and my hands were all over the place, reading the chat, listening to the people speak, surfing over to links that people were posting in the chat, writing some notes to myself on paper, then being so wired that I dropped everything to run around the corner for a cup of coffee (yes, coffee!) To be honest, I noticed at one point that I was thinking more about the ongoing Bayern-München game and was toying with the new blog on the side (talk about multitasking!) rather than “attending” the webinar, so if I look back I’d have to say that I now know that there is a good discussion going on, but I don’t really know what it’s about.
Why didn’t I pay closer attention? I’m really not 100% sure. I found the running chat quite distracting, actually, because it was always about something else than what the speaker was saying. You know, there’s always a delay, even when people type like the dickens. 160 people chatting and posting links – how does that work? It doesn’t, not really. Perhaps I was also a little frustrated to see how experienced those teachers were. So: A lot of energy and technology, just to fuel my stress levels. How very, very different, say, from sitting in a quiet place with my pen and a notebook and thinking the issue over on my own. Which is what I’ll do tomorrow. Because I need and want results.
PS: The topic was “Moodle” and the resources page at Classroom 2.0 Live has good related links.
2 Responses
Hi Anne,
Wow, you scare me.
Do I really need to know all of this stuff to do my job – training people to communicate better in English?
I hope not.
Anyhow, you have fun and keep us posted,
Cheers,
Joan
Hi Joan,
No, definitely not. Some teachers at schools and colleges are using online learning platforms for distance learning courses, and I decided to learn more about it a few years ago and got help setting up a platform of my own. Yes, if you like technology, all the stuff you can do can get pretty complicated. But then I kind of lost interest because my business clients really didn’t want it: They just wanted to read and watch things online, not attend a workshop from home.
Have you seen our new blog, Ask Auntie Web? The relevant techie stuff will be discussed there, and I’ll be giving a Moodle workshop in April to give everyone an idea of what it is and can do and to teach just a few tricks that are enough to get by on if you want to use the platform.
Have a good start to your week 🙂
Anne