This week’s webinar was different from all the others. It was PBS teachers launching off their new website. There was some good as well as some bad with this webinar. It started off really strong. I thought this was going to be interesting and fun. Before they gave us a tour of their new site and how it worked, they gave us a tour of Elluminate which was good because I wasn’t too sure how to use it. What I found to be interesting with Elluminate is the instructor could as some survey like questions and we could push A, B, C / yes or no buttons which gave an immediate response. Then she put up a map of the United States and asked where we were located. By picking up, what looked to be a wand, we could tap on this map were we lived. This could be very useful when doing an online class not just for the teachers, but for the students who will be working together. I have taken many online classes and always wondered where people lived.
Okay for the actual subject of this seminar was not so interesting. Besides the fact that we kept getting booted from the PBS teacher website while she was trying to give us a tour of all the things that this site could do many of us were unable to follow along. The one good thing about this site (that I was able to see) was there are many activities that are standard based which can include interactive games. All that you have to do is click on which grade level you are looking for and it brings you to a list of different activities.
This type of webinar could have really hurt this product. The reason I say this is because for most of the hour this site wasn’t running and all we had to go by was what she was telling us. Some of us did have another browser up and was trying to follower her by voice, but then I lost the experience of reading the chats. I find some of them to be amusing. It seemed to me that most of the people that were in this chat room were there for development hours that they need to complete to get re-certified. That was one good thing about this webinar was they are sending me a certificate of completion.
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Hi Angela,
ReplyDeleteWas the seminar on Elluminate itself? I think that what you are describing sounds pretty neat. Did they suggest any other utilities for the map? I was thinking (as a Social Studies Certification Candidate) that it would be kind of cool to use something like that to show migration patterns of people in a a lesson.
And I agree about the difficulty of following web based seminars. Some times there is just too much going on with chat rooms, visual aids and the presenters speaking on top of all of it.
Congrats on your certificate!
-Samantha
No this was a webinar on pbs teachers through elluminate. The Elluminate part was pretty interesting.It has a lot of tools that were pretty cool. Your idea on using it for a lesson sounds great. I am just not sure how to actully upload the assignment to elluminate. It would be interesting to find out.
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