Can You Hear Me Now?
October 27, 2007
When you first try something out there’s always that uneasy terror that everything’s going to go horribly wrong and you’ll be scratching some body part wondering what to do and what will happen next. I kinda felt like the gents in the above picture as we all scrambled to get onto the Skype conference today. A cacophony of dings and clicks and echos and ironically a land phone in the background helping people get on board.
A sinking ship or voyage to a new land? We should all be congratulated on our Skype conference. We jumped on board to see where this adventure would take us next.
After a little fenegaling there we all were. It was finally good to match voices to alias’s and finally to names although not seeing people when you’ve been communicating with them is still a bit strange. As they say, most cues to communication are non-verbal. Which was why there was often blank air in the conversation before we all got a “visual” of who was in the room.
Overall, it went well. The most important aspect for me was finding a bit about people’s backgrounds and expectations with their own voice. Its a much better way of getting their impression on things, that words cannot not alone express in blogs.
We talked a lot about paper topics. My paper will likely concentrate on inclusion of technologies kids use already (cell phones, Facebook, etc.) into the classroom. Other topics included how to create a community of learners and the impact of ICT in the classroom.
I will continue to share and borrow many of your resources and work on my to do list. Keep on Teching everyone.
Great picture to go with our ordeal today! I agree that is was great to hear where people are coming from as far as prior knowledge goes. Being a visual learner, not having the visual is definitely something I will need to get used to.
It was great to chat with you too. I couldn’t remember if we had even had telephone converstation before, so it was interesting to hear your voice as well. You are right, it does give another dimension to hear a persons spoken voice. I guess that is why podcasting is so interesting.
Your paper sounds interesting…trying to include tech that kids already use. I would be interested in knowing how you would tackle the problems associated with school divisions that ban cells phones and facebook. Please let me know how you would approach it, I am very interested in that topic.
I have to agree with your comment about being congratulated re: Skype Conference because despite not being on the real deal I did learn a little more on stay with-it-ness and myself and the perseverance and perspectives of others.