Tonight I attended the web conference hosted by Dr. Abernathy. It was hosted through Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro. It was a little bit out of control, since I don't think that they were prepared for the large number of students that attended. Dr. Abernathy said at one point that she had expected 25-30, but when I logged on there were already 97 people in the room, with room for only 3 more. Since there were so many people in the room, all trying to contribute to the conversation and ask questions, the script was moving very quickly and it was extremely hard to keep up with. It would be better if next time we participated in smaller groups.
Although it was a little bit oerwhelming, it was also a very neat experience that I look forward to trying again. It was also very cool to be able to speak in real time with one of our professors, a luxury that I have never had in this program.
I would love to someday be able to use this at school, either as a teacher or as an administrator. One person in the chat room mentioned that she would love to have parent conferences like that. I am not currently at a school where that would be possible, due to large numbers of families of low socioeconomic status who do not have access to computers and/or internet. However, maybe sometime in the future these things will become more available or I will work in a different setting.
I am the teacher representative for the PTA board of directors at my school, and I think that having our meetings via web conferencing would be a much more efficient way to meet than the monthly meetings we currently have in the school library. That way, all of the mothers could stay home with their families and we would probably have greater participation in each meeting.
Those are my thoughts on the web conferencing experience!
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And meetings could take place at a "family friendly" time as well! I liked the idea of the web conference also, but was frazzled by the numbers, too!
ReplyDeleteThis is strange that my blog is "Leading in Learning" and my initals are mjw! Great minds!
I did not get to participate in the web conference but can imagine it was an experience. It was probably a good thing that I did not login because I'm sure I would have been very overwhelmed trying to keep up by myself. I agree that a smaller group would be much more appropriate for rookies and I really want to advance my technology skills. It seems to be the wave of the future!
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