Web Conferencing

On Monday, February 6, 2012, I participated in a web conference for my CEP 812 course. The group, which consisted of four members, choose Adobe connect to discuss our Team Leadership Project. I preferred using Adobe for this assignment because I was familiar with its functions and I was confident that it would be reliable for this first conference. There is a phethoria of web conferencing software available. For use in a classroom environment one of the free services such as Vyew, AnyMeeting and Dim Dim, would be a better selection because there is no cost.

The meeting began a few meeting after 8:00 p.m.. Before beginning to record we tried to work out the kinks with the echoing of sound, which came from everyone having speaker rights at the same time. This was a problem throughout the meeting for me. There also seemed to be a delay of my voice transmitting to the meeting. From the time I spoke until I could hear it relayed was about two seconds. This was the only problem I can note. I believe with more experience, this technicality will be worked out. We set another meeting to further discuss our project, next Monday at the same time.

I applaud the host of our meeting because she was very quick to offer solutions to our audio problems. Per suggestion, we used our Google Docs to type in responses when the audio continued to present an issue. The flow between screens was excellent. We were able to confer with syllabus requirements and other related documents to help set up this assignment.

One of the things I believe would be more helpful in the next meeting is to have all the screens open that you are to use. If you are to conference in a classroom setting, timing is important so that your view does not sense lack of preparation. I also believe if only person had speaking rights instead everyone having their microphone opened at the same time this would cure our audio problems.

I have played around with the possibility of using web-conferencing for parent teacher’s conferences. Reaching out to parents in any way you can is something teacher are trying hard to do. Another use for web conferencing I would like to explore is connecting to student webinars for peer instructions. It has been duly noted that students learned from other students. Providing them with an arena to conduct positive peer interactions will create a learning environment that is student centered. This is one of the main goals of integrating technology into learning and web conferencing provides yet another way to expanded opportunities for students to learn. Here is the link to our conference. http://connect.msu.edu/p8xuzeqz7v9/