Lost Connection

Lost Connection
Originally uploaded by Lulú De Panbehchi







 
Web-conferencing and Live Streaming: My Experiences and Near-experiences

I'm glad I have participated either first-had or second-hand on web-conferencing and live streaming. I have to say that everything you have read about web-conferencing, webinars, online classes and teaching is true: it is difficult, but it can also be fun and very productive in many ways.

This time, instead of making reference to articles, I will tell you a little about my experiences with this type of technology.

1. Chat room office hours – 2001

Back in 2001, I tried to have my office hours online. I set up a chat room in my website and told my students that I was going to be there for an hour. Nobody showed up. I asked “why?” and everybody mentioned that chat rooms were for chatting, not for office hours. I gave up after two tries. I was actually pretty scared because a lot of people had the idea that chat rooms were only for rated-R conversations. By the way, my last adventure in chatroomland was around that year, when I got scared while in room apparently having a discussion on Spanish grammar. The chat was from Spain and it made me think that I was in the wrong place. I left and never went back there or any other chat rooms.

2. Professional 2002 – synchronous delivery
A year or so after the failed attempt to hold office hours from home, I decided to take an online class related to copyright law. It was much more demanding than I thought. But it also gave me the opportunity to observe other students and the professor, who always gave us several articles and cases to read before class. The technology was very impressive, it can actually be compared to the current (late 2010) version of Wimba. The professor always had a multiple choice question at the beginning of the class, and every five minutes or so, there was another question/quiz.

When I was taking this class, I had to close the door of my office, have one cup of coffee and one glass of water ready, my textbook, a law dictionary, a regular dictionary, the computer with at least three programs open—two browser windows and my word processor. I always had headphones and microphone on while taking the class, and had the telephone ready, just in case I got disconnected. It was a lot of work and preparation, but the lectures were very good and I was always happy after class.

3. VCU Online training 2003-2004 – asynchronous delivery

VCU used to have a self-paced series of online training classes. Students and teachers had to be proficient in Word, PowerPoint, etc. The courses were provided by Thompson. There were different areas: desktop and personal computing, project management, programming, and other areas that I don't remember now. I took as many desktop classes as I could. It was very nice to see what I had completed, what I had started and never finished, etc. The disadvantage was that I didn't share this experience with any other VCU teachers or students. I have not checked if VCU still has this service, which in a way offered the same or similar classes to the ones the CTE offers now.

4. Spanish classes at 2007-2008 – synchronous delivery
In 2007 the School of World Studies at VCU decided to offer Spanish 101 online. The teacher is a great and very hard working educator—one of the more hyperactive language teachers that I know at the university level. She reported that preparation was very time-consuming and that teaching online was being available 24/7/thewholesemester. She left VCU and went to work on her PhD in education at Georgetown University. Before she left, she trained another teacher who had experience tutoring online. The textbook companies had done a very good job with the books and the self-paced lessons, but the students still needed to have a lot of contact with the teacher. The other problem was the engagement of the students. They were online constantly, emailing, calling, visiting the professors at different times. One of the problems was the “face-to-face office hours.” Since most of the students took the online class due to hectic schedules, it was difficult for the teachers to say, “I'll be available at this hour every day, only.” Due to lack of funds and the amount of work, it was decided that the online classes were going be put on hold, until there were enough funds. However, the first teacher came back to teach during the summer, but she offered an intermediate Spanish class via Wimba and Skype. This year it was the third year she offered the class completely online. It seems that an intermediate language class works much better than an elementary one, since students already know the language and the only problems they have are related to the technology.

5. Chat with French university 2008 – synchronous delivery

In 2008 I used “Chat,” the Mac program to connect with a French university in Haute Normandie. They were trying to show that this was a valid way to hold conferences and interact. Apparently, the university paid for the MobileMe Apple service and trained the teachers. It was an early chat for me at 5:30 AM. I was in my pajamas. I didn't know that my friend—who works at this university, and recruited me for this project—was in a very formal meeting, while I was half asleep, in pajamas, and almost crying for a cup of coffee or tea. I was able to enter the hard drive in their computer, and they did the same with my computer. I demonstrated how I had used Photoshop to work on a photo, etc. It was a great experience.

6. French class 2010 – synchronous and sometimes asynchronous delivery
Currently, I'm taking French 101 online at VCU with Dr. Murphy-Judy. She has told me and I have seen it: teaching an online class is a lot of work. I am a students and I have to prepare a lot: textbook, word processor, browser, something to drink, headphones, microphone if the place I am is noisy, and my notebook. It has been a roller coaster with Wimba: sometimes it works beautifully, sometimes it's a little slow. The times I have missed the class, I have used the archives (asynchronous delivery) and it is true that silence is not gold, but a big distraction. It is easier for me to stop paying attention when I am using the archive than when I am interacting with the class synchronically. The class is very small. It has less than 10 students, which makes it easy to participate, contribute, have fun, and form meaningful relationships. We care a lot for each other and care for the teacher as well. I have worked with two of my classmates on two different projects, and we have done most of the work using Google docs and email. If everything goes well, I will take French 102 online next semester.

7. Spanish 201 via Skype – synchronous delivery

Three weeks ago I had to stay at home due to a family emergency. My students had class: they went to the language lab and started and finished a conversation project, while I was at home giving instructions and answering questions via Skype. For some reason, Wimba didn't work that day, so my students were fascinated that I was able to hear what they were doing. At the end, they posted their conversations on the wiki. Everything went fine, because I had planned to use Skype in case Wimba didn't work. I had also all the instructions ready: I posted them on Blackboard, sent them by email, and posted them on the front page of the wiki. I had a browser open with Blackboard on one window and email on another; on a different browser I had the class wiki, and had Skype and my cell phone ready to call the language lab in case of an emergency.

It was a great experience. Every student finished their work.

After all this, I feel like I'm still not prepared to teach an elementary language class 100% online. Perhaps an intermediate class, which still means a lot of preparation, but at least I do not need to teach pronunciation and technology at the same time.

I remember when I was watching Ashton Kutcher win the race to one million followers on Twitter against CNN. This was the first time I realized how smart Kutcher is. He was using new media to broadcast his race against old media. He used ustream, and that was the first time I used ustream too.

Screencasting

I made the following screen recording in class last week. It's a screencasting of "Box Office Mojo."  I believe that the information is not only for show business people, but it also serves as a reference for an ice breaker activity. 

[This post will have a second part]

This is the entry for a podcast:

[Audio made with an iPhone, image made with my right index, mixed with Keynote, saved as a QuickTime movie file. This is how it looks--more or less--on an iPhone. ]

And this is the screencast [I had to remake it. For some reason, the audio was very bad in the first try.]

Gardner Campbell's Podcasting Article, “There Is Something In The Air.”

Article can be found at:

http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume40/TheresSomethingintheAirPodcast/158014

There are three topics in Campbell's article that got my attention.

1. the world he paints at the beginning of the article, in which a student listens to podcasts before going to class;
2. the concept of “the explaining voice;” and
3. archiving issues.

1. The world in which students listen to podcasts before attending class.

First, I believe that the beautiful world in which the student has access and listens to several podcasts is still a dream world, at least in most universities and perhaps in most adult education classes.

One of the reasons, probably the main reason, is that professors need to produce these materials. Even when textbook companies produce podcasts, the professor still has to decide if those materials will be included in class, how the students will have access to them, how the use of podcasts will be graded, etc. Now, professors are kind of like octopi: they need to handle a lot, just like Campell mentioned in his article. They need to be up to day with what they teach and how to teach it, they need to create their own materials, write and publish, give lectures and attend conferences, etc. I will not mention names of people or institutions, but three years ago I happened to be present when a professor was asking a secretary, “can you type this for me, please?” Per the conversation, I learned that this professor and one of his/her colleagues never typed anything related to school. I still don't understand how they can live without typing their own exams, for example

But when professors get together and are willing to collaborate, students benefit a lot. Collaboration, which is still a dream in several departments, would also empower students. Because if students see that their professors are convinced that something something works for teachers, the latter would feel more comfortable teaching with new tools, like podcasting.

2. The explaining voice

Campbell says,

“There’s also considerable value in what I call “the explaining voice,” the voice that performs understanding. The explaining voice doesn’t just convey information; it shapes, out of a shared atmosphere,an intimate drama of cognitive

action in time. The explaining voice conveys microcues of hesitation, pacing, and inflection that demonstrate both cognition and metacognition. When we hear someone read with understanding, we participate in that understanding, almost as if the voice is enacting our own comprehension. In other words, the explaining voice trains the ear to listen not just for meaning but for evidence of the thought that generates meaning.”

I'm a sound/audio person. I believe that my ear is very good. I can hear a lot of what my students say in class, and sometimes I hear a sound that most people will not notice. “The explaining voice” is, in my opinion, one of the best points in this article, because if an individual doesn't have a convincing, pleasant voice, he or she will have a few listeners. Our best voice is produced when we don't think about our voice, and sometimes we don't like to hear anybody reading monotonously for us, but rather having a conversation with us. Reading and talking/conversing are different. Talking/conversing/explain will definitely get my attention faster than reading.

3. Archiving issues

I tried to listen to the supplementary audio files, but I was not able to find them. One of the problems with online only publications is that systems, servers, and code change and sometimes something is lost. The life of new, online materials sometimes is shorter than the life of old, offline documents and references. In this case, the author was responsible for keeping the archive, since the link goes to his site. A lot has changed since 2005, when the article was published. In Internet years, that's perhaps the equivalent of a decade or more. I do not get mad anymore, because materials got lost, or because the file formats are not rendered by my Mac. I have learned to accept the fact that archiving is one of the downsides of the Internet.