First blog

During the group presentation assessments each group had to present in front of the class and explain the designated technology that was assigned to them. The webinar group stood out the most to me and I still remember clearly the class on that day. The group gave an example of a webinar during their presentation, by providing a webinar that could be accessed to the whole class and DOCS.. this was managed by Anne.

I never really knew about webinars until the day of the presentation. It is basically a web confrenece, where people can see each other and everybody on the network can communicate simultaneously. According to Kaplan-Leiserson (2008) a                ‘webinar is a small synchronous online learning event in which a presenter and audience members communicate via text chat or audio about concepts often illustrated via online slides and/or an electronic whiteboard’.

My thoughts on the Webinar…

During the presentation the webinar was available for people to use. I found this extremely distracting as people (including my self) were writing messages to others in the classroom and not listening to the presenter. The whole point was for the learners (me) to explore the technology during the presentation.. but I found that this was an overload of multimedia and presentation occurring at the same time. I would only use it as a facilitator if everybody was on the webinar and there were no disruptions during the session, otherwise the learning defiantly gets hindered.

Kaplan-Leiserson, E. 2008, Glossary, Learning Circuits, viewed 6/06/08, < http://www.learningcircuits.org/ASTD/Templates/LC/LC_OneBox.aspx?NRMODE=Published&NRORIGINALURL=%2fglossary&NRNODEGUID=%7bA1A2C751-7E81-4620-A0A3-52F3A90148EB%7d&NRCACHEHINT=NoModifyGuest#W>.