Weekly Blog Post #5

February 15, 2018

Classes this week were a little bit different for Internet for Educators, since we experienced synchronous and asynchronous classes from the comforts of our homes. In order to do this, we had to make use of some more new programs, that I am going to discuss a little bit further.

The first program is one that I have mentioned intrigued me, since some of the previous presenters have made contact with us by using it. I'm talking about Zoom, a video conferencing chat room program. From wherever we all were, we joined the video chat during the scheduled class time, synchronously meeting up to have discussions and what not much like we would have if we had met in the classroom. This way however we were able to just wear comfy clothes, enjoy snacks, and were able to get cameos from everyone's pets. Which was awesome. But to speak about the actual program again, it functioned really nicely. I had commented already that the video and audio aspects seemed to be some of the best I've used in terms of video chatting. However, it wasn't until being put into the thick of it that I could appreciate how great of a program it actually could be, especially if you were going to be using it for online classes. A number of the features that the program has, such as the screen sharing, breakout rooms, and chat room features helps to make it feel more interactive, and allowed us all to collaborate nicely.

We also used Peardeck during this video chat, which for Mike and his two screen set-up was great, since he could screen share his slides with us and still be watching the video chat screens of all his students. For many of us though, a simple screen share might have worked more efficiently though, since I found myself trying to flip back and forth from one program to the other and missing bits and pieces.

The final program I am going to discuss is the one that was used for the asynchronous class. For this class, we were all given a set of questions to ponder, around the Internet, democracy, and culture, and then to engage in discussion about these questions on a program called VoiceThread. This is similar to the Flipgrid app which we used for another assignment, in which we recorded a 90-second clip. However, I feel like this VoiceThread app is almost a little bit better since it seemed like you could do more with it. I enjoyed that the comments could be applied on whatever slide of the presentation you wished to, and that the comments rolled through in order one after the next once you started them. I also thought that being able to do a video, audio, or chat response allowed for more variety and choice, which some students would definitely appreciate. Overall, I can see this program being useful for the classroom if properly applied. The tricky part would be figuring out how exactly to do that.

-B