new tech & teaching workshop 2

The last day of the new technology and teaching workshop was busy as we learned about Elluminate, which is much like Microsoft's Netmeeting. Participants are able to IM, work on documents together, and interact via video and audio (although that seems to work best with one person presenting to others). I'd like to use it for podcasting. At the end of the day, we shared our plans for incorporating new technology into the classroom. I talked about this class and my experiment with blogging as well as the wikis I've set up for the department.

I didn't keep track, but it seemed like most of the workshop participants plan to use wikis in their classes, although at least two others mentioned blogs. Wikis provide a great way to organize. As one of the workshop facilitators said, wikis mean fewer meetings, and who isn't for that?

Nearly all the COMM 144 class members have set up their blogs, so we've got a lengthy blog roll. I'm looking forward to the blogs next week (which starts tomorrow) when students blog about their favorite concepts from chapters 3-6 and the metaphors web lecture. Although there may be some common themes, I suspect we'll get a lot of variation in the concepts class members find most meaningful.

--Prof. Cyborg