Good morning!
This morning was my very first interaction with Skype. My husband set it up for me, which is probably a form of cheating but I was working on my other assignments and time got away from me. He also gave me a headset/microphone combo to use as well. I did test my microphone before the conference by calling my dad this morning, but as the actual school conference got underway, I believe the combo was my downfall. As the meeting went on, my headset was working against me; the sound kept switching from my right to left ear and the volume would randomly increase!! I appreciate everyone's willingness to put up with my typing instead of talking. I pride myself on my ability to "chat" online but seemed to be having technical difficulties today - I think I am getting old and am less able to multi-task!
I really enjoyed the session today. In the beginning when I signed up for my sessions, I was a little more excited about Wimba because I have used it a couple times at work. I was uncertain about Skype, but I can definitely see the benefits of using it. I might end up using it for more personal use, but the conversation today was great. We covered a lot of relevant topics for Distance Education and I really appreciate that our professors took the time to give us some synchronous learning experience for our course.
I also learned a lot about my classmates. Paul and I seemed a little bit more reserved in speaking, or it seemed. We chimed in with answers but not as frequently as Simone and Tomeatha. This might have been a good reflection of our participation in a regular classroom. Everyone had a lot of great ideas and follow-up and the discussion did veer off point a couple times but it was a great learning experience for all. We also had a quick Q&A session with the professors concerning some of the assignments. I am very impressed with how much we covered during the session. I know I added to some of the confusion with my typing, but hopefully I can get a new microphone before our Wimba session so this can be avoided. I hope I did not distract from the learning process.
Side note: I did want to give up when I realized my microphone was not working, but the topics were interesting and I did not want to give up when everyone had taken time out of their weekends for this conference.
I want to say thank you to everyone, especially Gila and Jim, for a great session today!
Hi Aloma,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad your Skype session went well this morning. I enjoyed mine as well even though there were only 4 of us and that included Gila and Jim. I think I'm going to try to make myself available for whichever Wimba conference has the most people signed up. Unfortunately, I'm going to have family in town that weekend which will make it a bit difficult but I've never used Wimba and want to try it. I'd also like to "see" some of my classmates so hopefully I can squeeze the session into my schedule.
Take care,
Eva
Hi Aloma,
ReplyDeleteYour observations about Skype are quite astute. We also had some sound problems during the conference call I participated in so I can understand your frustration with the technology not working up to par. You aren’t getting old – it’s just the way technology works (or doesn’t work) sometimes! The fact that you could still take part using chat is pretty cool. We used the chat function a little bit during our conversation, but mostly just so we (maybe just “me” since I was the only newbie to Skype) could see that it was an available tool.
Your thoughts about how your Skype call would probably compare to a traditional classroom were interesting too. I guess personalities can and do come out even in a conference call. I didn’t think about this much until after reading your post, but when I think back to the call I participated in I did form more concrete impressions of Gila, Jim and Jodi.
Hopefully we will both take part in the same Wimba conference call so we can “meet” in another way.
Eva