My online event was held on the 23rd November and although it took several days for me to 'recover', all in all it was definately a great learning experience. I learnt lots throughout the entire process, the planning leading up to the mini conference, and in the hands-on facilitation experience itself.
I was lucky to have two experienced presenters, Nellie Deutsch and Gladys Gahona as my guest speakers, as both women are actively involved in online instruction and facilitation for the collaborative teaching network and workshops on IT4ALL .They discussed and demonstrated ways in which they combine free-ware such as Moodle, Ning, WikiEducator, Facebook, Twitter,WiZiQ and others,to share, promote, conduct and enhance online instruction and learning. Although I was kept very busy during the event (I felt a bit like a newbie switchboard operator!) I was still able to enjoy their presentation, which I believe gave all attending, a valuable glimpse into what, 'could be' should we wish to further explore and evolve as facilitators and online instructors.
Watching experience in action...
My enrolment in the Grad Cert Appld eLearning has been my first experience of eLearning and of an online conferencing tool, this of course being Elluminate. However, it is only though participation in FOC09 that I have come to truely appreciate the benefits this synchronous medium brings to eLearning. Being able to connect and interact with instructor and fellow participants in real time provided an opportunity to experience being part of an online community and to observe facilitation in action. I'm sure I became more aware of this because online community and facilitation is what FOC is all about!
I had already dismissed the notion of using online conferencing in my sole instructor practice because of cost, Elluminate is beyond my budget i'm afraid! but FOC has opened my eyes to a wider range of potential eLearning tools, and several free online conferencing tools also, such as WiZiQ. I decided right away that I would use one of these for my mini conference rather than Elluminate, as it might become my future choice of online conferencing tool. I finally decided on WiZiQ because it had a well developed network of teachers regularly holding classes, including my presenters Nellie and Gladys.
Observing the co-presenting skills modelled by Nellie and Gladys during the conference provided great insight into how to work well with another presenter, and was another lesson in itself, aside from the presentation topic.
What when well .....
Although I use email a lot and think its a great way to communicate, I think it has its limitations when trying to plan an event involving people living in several different time zones. I think that if I had continued to trade emails I would not have gotten the clarification I required on several issues in time for the mini event, and would have felt less prepared, so having an online discussion session in WiZiQ was definitely a good idea, and worked very well.
Once I had been given several suitable date/time options, I used Doodle to find out which day and time would be most suitable for the other FOC09 participants to attend my mini conference. I think this worked well and was quick,easy to set up and to monitor responses, and saved me having to send, track and record the responses from multiple emails. Thankfully everyone responded promptly so I was able to schedule the most suitable date and time within days.
What didn't go so well ...
Prior to the WiZiQ discussion session I was unable to locate my Web cam which meant I missed the opportunity to practice using it in WiZiQ, unfortunately this lack of practice caused me ongoing grief during the mini event ... as I did not know how to properly disable my web cam to allow attendees to view both presenters at the same time. Also in attempting to disable my web cam during my online event, my computer decided to freeze for about two minutes (which seemed more like 10 minutes), and made me wish for the ground to open up beneath me and swallow me whole! ... the web cam drama's continued throughout the event, as I had to alternate web cam use between presenters, which did not occur at the speed of a mouse click, and for some unknown reason seemed to work better for one presenter than the other :( ... last,but by no means less mortifying was my event wrap up, which was supposed to be done using my web cam, unfortunately I had managed to disable it to the point of non revival!
Another wee hitch was that the box showing attendees names only made visible three or four at once, unlike Elluminate where all are visible, Icons for microphone, web cam and tools appeared beside each persons name, so every time I needed to give access to someone I had to frantically scroll up or down the list of names to locate the one I needed....tiring stuff...
I advertised my mini event via the FOC09 Google Groups Forum, Course Wiki page, and the WiZiQ invite function, with participants being sent an automated invite.
My presenters had granted me temporary access to use their professional account, as this had more privileges that my free account. I scheduled my event on the Integrating Technologies account, and sent invites via WiZiQ. I then sent an email to FOC asking all interested to join WiZiQ and accept the Interating Technologies invite, in case they wondered who IT was, and asked those who had not received an invite to send me their personal address, because with WiZiQ I could not send an invite to the FOC Google Groups account. Response from participants was slow, and started to worry me a bit ... in hindsight I should have sent out an RSVP to the class, so I had a clearer idea who would be attending, like Stephen, Rosceli and a few others did.
I also became concerned when I logged into my free WiZiQ account to see the session appear here also, making me wonder if attendees needed to login to the session here, or could login on either account..to arrive in the same session .... so I sent out more invites, this time from my personal network I know seems rather silly (I will play the blonde card here!) What I should have done is ask my presenters to clear up my confusion about this ... To explain how several would be attendees were unable to access the class would make this an extremely long blog post, so I will just make the point that I have now 'once and for all time' finally learnt this lesson:- If in doubt - ask questions until you have understanding - never bury your head in the sand, and hope all will be 'right on the night'!
Had I checked the FOC emails within 10 minutes of the start of session, rather than 20 minutes, with the session well under way, I think I would have either resorted to plan B (Elluminate) or asked my presenters what to do to get the others into WiZiQ, unfortunately I was so rattled by this time because of my computer freezing e.t.c ... I chose to do nothing and carry on .... I don't think this is what an experienced, professional facilitator would have done somehow ....
I have still to bring myself to watch the recording (may wait a month or so... however if you were unable to attend or could not access the session you can view the PowerPoint presentation and class recording by following the link on the FOC09 course wiki.
Thanks ..... feedback welcome and much appreciated ....
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Hi Catherine,
ReplyDeleteI learnt aboutWiziq and thought it was a good teaching tool.Although a bit lost and confused entering your session,was pleased to be able to get in finally.I must mention, that all the partcipants were co-operative and supportive by mailing one other about whats happening, at this point it would have helped if you had entered the scene (as you too mentioned above).So we all learn with exsperience eh!
Having said that once we all entered it was all smooth and the presentation was all worth the chaos.
You advertised your event well and sent enough reminders, i too realised it is hard to get everyones attention.
I loved the team work of your presenters Nellie and Gladys and they shared interesting info (never known kind of) with us about having our own facilitation workshops.
I found the discussion very informative and useful, so hopefully i will explore more on Wikieducator next year.
The best bit of any live event like yours is you could ask answers straight away,and get answers too and your event achieved that even within short timeframe.
So overall you did a great job facilitating your conference,it was a valuable experince with wiziq so thank you.
Meena
Thanks Meena,
ReplyDeleteI agree WiZiQ is a great teaching tool, I wish I had had more experience with it prior to the event though, as there was more multi tasking involved that I had imagined. After the event I wished I had used Elluminate because I would have had less to do, however it may not have gone any smoother there either(i'll never know!)
Hi Catherine, I've finally got around to watching the recording of your mini event. Well done for organising this and getting hold of two very experienced and fascinating speakers. The session was very interesting, and it was good to good an alternative tool to Elluminate and DimDim.
ReplyDeleteYour reflection is very honest, and it is clear you learned heaps from this experience...and lets face it, that's what this course is all about.
My main feedback is that you made no clear contingency plan and consequently lost a couple of us. You missed my pleas on email and I had no other way of reaching you. After 20 minutes I gave up. But you don't need me to rub salt into the wound...
Great work, Catherine..hope to catch you around next year :)
This is fascinating.
ReplyDeleteI’d been taught that left-aligned labels are preferred, to support the prototypical F-shaped eye-tracking heatmap of web browsing. The idea is that it supports easy vertical scanning.
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