Wimba
Well this didn’t come easily to me at all. In fact i had a lot of confusion about this one. I signed into the Wimba Live classroom account as instructed, o.k., that was easy. Wimba tested my set-up and that went fine. So far so good. Then a new page opened up saying ‘Welcome to ETEC565’ at which point i was faced with the question, ‘now what?’ It looked like a chat program but it’s hard to know for sure unless you actually have someone to chat with. I tried typing in, ‘this is a test’ and was informed in the little box, ‘you tell etec565, this is a test’ ‘etec565 tells you, this is a test’ which i suppose means that i’m talking to myself (again). I did play with some of the buttons and it looks like it could be very useful, if everyone you were communicating with had all the right stuff, mic and headsets for example. I also liked the white board but i’m not sure how much use it would really get in a group chat. One of the things i liked the most was that you could add a web page in a separate box. Having been taken away from Vista more than once for clicking on a link within a chat, that seemed really useful.
One thing i am having a problem with though is the reflection assignment for Wimba. The assignment says, ‘Write an entry for your course weblog about your experience here (on your “Home” page and posting a new entry). How labour intensive was the process? What worked well? What was challenging? What surprised you’. I’m not really sure what’s being asked. My experiences where? On the Wimba chat? How labour intensive was what process? Maybe this will become clear later and i’ll be able to respond better to this, but for now, to coin a much used phrase, ‘ I don’t get it’