Here’s a blog post I wrote in November 2008, in response to Downes’ article:
http://cellodav-blogtolearn.blogspot.com/2008/11/reading-to-blog-to-learn.html
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Tag: discussion
Categories
Communication|noitacinummoC
I’m not entirely certain what to say here – I’ve used a variety of communication tools in personal, educational and professional contexts for a number of years now, both in and external to LMSs. Setting up a discussion forum in Moodle really wasn’t very hard, once I’d figured out a purpose for it. I suppose I could have set up a Moodle chat, using the built-in tool, but I decided that my course content really demanded voice and video capabilities. I’ve used Skype, MSN Messenger, Adobe Connect, Wimba Classroom, Elluminate Live!, and probably others I really don’t remember any more…
Skype is a tool that I use regularly to teach cello to an adult student who lives more than a few hours from me. Except for one recent lesson that was interrupted by a power outage in my student’s community, Skype has worked fairly well. It’s drawbacks are the slight delay that makes it impossible to play duets online, and that only two users can broadcast video simultaneously. As soon as you have more than two participants, Skype goes to voice and text only.
For multiple participants, I’ve found Elluminate Live! to be a very robust and reliable meeting platform, with good management features. However, since I’m cheap and didn’t want to shell out for more than a free service, I briefly considered using Elluminate’s V-Room service, which is fairly limited in its capabilities and number of uses. It’s really more of a teaser to get you to subscribe to a paid service. Instead, I decided to try out Dimdim, which had been recommended on a couple of different occasions by various Ed Tech colleagues. Dimdim is an Indo-European opensource project, with a scaled-down free service with unlimited usage. Yes, it’s also a teaser, but more functional than V-Room. Despite the paid-subscription plans, the software is free to download and host on your own.
I did test Dimdim out with several family members. Setting up the meeting, logging in and managing participants was a breeze. I did have some technical difficulties, but they were specifically related to the setup of my computer and not to Dimdim itself. This is definitely a service I’d use again…
David
Categories
Synchronous Discussions?
In the group work for our assignment on choosing an online delivery platform, we decided to “meet” online. The idea was to set up a live video chat session so we could get to know each other a bit better and to plan out our strategy for completing the assignment – very noble ideas! However, our experience followed a trajectory that shows up quite frequently with this sort of enterprise: Novelty – Disappointment – Resort to the Lowest Common Denominator…
Novelty: I’d heard some positive reports about Adobe’s free online meeting app (Connect) and suggested that we give it a try. Setting up the meeting was easy and three of us were online, chatting and sharing video within minutes. We spent a good ten minutes or so discussing the app and trying out different features – and wondering where our fourth member was… It turns out Connect (at least the free version) can only handle up to three participants in a meeting. This is too bad, since having simultaneous video from more than two participants is an improvement on Skype’s service.
Frustration: Since Connect was out of the question, we considered Skype, and briefly had three of us chatting with live audio (no video, of course). Unfortunately, this kept our fourth member on the sidelines without a Skype install. We tried using our WebCT Vista Chat room, but it managed to freeze and crash all of our computers (several different systems, browsers)- not a useful result at all.
Lowest Common Denominator: Since we were editing our document collaboratively using Google Docs, we decided to use Gmail Chat – a similar tool to MSN Messenger or Yahoo Messenger. Gmail Chat does have video and audio possibility, but we decided not to risk wasting even more time and stuck with the text chat, which worked quite beautifully. An added bonus was that Gmail archived our conversation automatically.
The upshot is that we spent about 90 minutes in what had been scheduled as a 60 minute discussion, spending more than half the time trying to iron out the technical glitches. I imagine that users (students, teachers) who are less technologically-inclined than the average MET student are likely to get completely turned off by such technical frustrations. If we want to make good use of synchronous tools to bridge our physical distances, we need tools that are reliable and work for all users when needed. Out of 60 minutes for an online meeting, I would like to expect to spend no more than 2 minutes dealing with technical issues. Our time is too precious to waste.
Have you encountered similar issues?
What apps would you suggest, and why?
What kind of dis/advantage might there be by using a commercial provider?
Categories
fiddling in moodle
Well, I’ve just finished following the introductory moodle activity as outlined in the moodle toolkit wiki page. I’m accustomed to setting up pages and discussion forums in WebCT CE, which is fairly quick and simple. Setting up the discussion forum in moodle did take more work than I’m used to, but I think that’s partly because of what I’m used to and also because of the number of setting options available in moodle. (Flipping back and forth between the moodle course and the wiki to ensure I followed the instructions to the letter was also time consuming and likely more labour intensive than it would be to create a forum on my own.)
The one feature that was new to me, so far, was the grading option in the forum. This option does open up some possibilities for assessment, but I would want to really think about how and why I would grade individual posts, and whether all, some or even any posts ought to be graded in this way. Why isn’t there a checkbox option for students and faculty to indicate that they have read a posting? This could be a useful measuring tool too.
I also have some trepidation about the layout of the discussion forum, but I won’t really be able to judge its effectiveness until there are more postings to read. Things seem to be okay for two postings, but will moodle afford a good organization of several thousand messages?
I find it interesting too, that moodle automatically set up my course shell for a 10-week organization. Such defaults might restrict less adventurous (digitally) faculty who are trying to create online courses.
Cheers,
David