I can honestly say that this is one of the coolest topics to discuss. However, given my school's current technological status, I am not sure how effective this will be in my classroom. In talking with my librarian, who just happens to have taken this grad program 2 years ago - but not online :), she told me that our current bandwith is only 10MB. Luckily, we were one of the winners of a grant that will increase our bandwith to 100MB starting next school year.
This added bandwith will allow for video chat and streaming online. I am very excited about this and hope that it will help move my district closer to offering courses online.
For the time being then, I'll just have to make do with the webcam I have installed on my laptop or the one I purchased on sale a year ago. It doesn't give a very clear picture, but that's alright. I tell you though, sometimes it is nice to be able to just sit here and chat online and not worry about what I'm wearing. This is my first weekend off for 3 weeks now and I have a chat session planned with my group and I haven't changed out of my pajamas yet. :)
How does this all apply to my classroom, well receiving this grant will now allow me to feel better about chatting with clinicians from far away. I still plan to try this in a few months, but I might ask someone I know, just in case things don't go as planned.
For those interested, here are a few links to other audio/video chat programs:
Skype - great for calling around the world.
TokBox - very nice for sending a video e-mail.
Sightspeed
ooVoo - very much like Skype but newer.
UStreamTV - this is more a program that allows one to broadcast a video, not chat in real time.
My plan is to use one of these online chat programs with my classroom as a distance learning tool, possibly trying it out as a clinic session, or making a call to someone for teaching advice. At home, my wife and I can use this to video chat with a friend in North Carolina and California. I'll be talking with both of them soon and will recommend getting one of the programs above.
Last weekend my group and I attempted chatting over video from our Ning network. It was challenging and we eventually ended up using the audio only, but we learned a valuable lesson in the process.
I love your baby pictures. His cute little face makes be smile when I go to the Ning. I am very thankful that you brought up your bandwidth problem. I hate little surprises...like why doesn't this work...which is one reason that I'm going to try Skype out after school, at school, with an experienced Skype user.
ReplyDeleteWhile there are definitely bandwith issues to be had, the possibilities of havign access to this sort of technology may be enough to persuade districts to invest in more bandwidth or find a creative out of the box solution. I know you can use cell phones as modems in the past. I wonder if you couldn't have your district get one cellphone with this capability, then use that for more bandwith? I don't know all of the technical issues that go along with this. I'm just throwing out some ideas.
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