Synchronous Communication Tools

The MET program has given me lots of opportunities to work with synchronous chat tools. This has been a new but interesting way for me to communicate with my peers to discuss course content and to work on group projects. I have had the opportunity to use Skype, Vista chat tools, MSN, Wimba, etc, for chatting with my peers. I found MSN to be very frustrating as a chatting tool in a larger group setting. Skype is good but it can get confusing with more than one person and the quality of the calls, etc, can be problematic. The Vista chat tool is down on many occasions and can lead to a lot of frustration when working in a group setting. Out of all the tools I have used, I found Wimba to be the best. My initial exposure to Wimba was in my previous course. I had used it to have group discussions and really liked that voice or text could be used as well as the whiteboard. Through this course I got the opportunity to use it for a group project as well as to use it in the group chat. I thought the group chat was great because all of us could be present while content was shared with us. Playing around with this program was interesting. I like the different features it has and think it was user friendly. I have seen the benefit of using tools such as these and would be very interest in using a tool such as Wimba to teach with. The only concern I have is that it does get a little confusing when there are lots of people present in a chat setting. When people speak it is hard to follow who said what and sometimes the things people type may not be acknowledged due to the amount of info coming through. I think this is a good tool for smaller group setting and is great for instructor demos and for working on program projects.