I took part in the video conference within Glow yesterday. It was my first experience of videoconferencing and I think there were two aspects to the experience, the technical and the social which provoked reflection.
As often happens, in these circumstances, I find that my ICT skills are different from those required in the educational sphere and the leap required can sometimes seem like a backwards one. All the “educational” versions of things work less well and have more de-motivating aspects than the “normal” ones which are already up and running and work well - the price for a supposed “safer” environment? And yet will it protect kids and teachers from cyber-bullying? Grooming? Sharing of anarchic links? A topic for another day.
Previously, I’ve taken part in real-time typed conversations in on-line groups – a major motivation to speed up my typing!- and also msn or chatroom conversations where you type, have time to review and then send to the other person or forum. When conversation is creative and interactive, both of these require quick thinking and responding, and rarely more than a couple of lines at most at a time. Also at times, on msn for eg, there’s a gap between exchanges as people switch between active conversations. I think this is how my own children communicate online most of the time.
(As an aside, I overheard a convo amongst my “kids” aged 17-24.
“Like, they used to have to phone each other individually to decide when and where to meet”
“Yeah, how did they ever manage it?”
“They must have had to think days ahead to get everyone there”
“Sad”)
Yesterday was the first time I have taken part in video conferencing, and I had a mixture of excitement and to be honest, disappointment. I got my videocamera up and running, but didn’t have a microphone, so I could see and hear all that was going on, but only contribute through typing. As the rest of the group, bar one had working microphones, my contributions were generally unnoticed, or too late to be relevant. I suppose I must have felt like some kids in my class when they lack the skills or other means to take part, and have to be satisfied with an observing role. Safe, but at times, frustrating. (Chris – cp Larkin)
There were about 8 or 9 people in the “room”, arrayed on small screens (see Tessa’s flickr set) but it was difficult for me to tell who was talking at any point. The larger image above the smaller ones was supposed to change to show this, but on my screen it changed every couple of seconds no matter which settings I chose, and the image was jerky, so I couldn’t easily match voices to images. The quality of some sound was unclear and it was tiring and sometimes confusing to listen to. In addition,many of the group were from the same Authority, knew each other, and had a previously shared experience.( I realized that I had actually sat beside one of them at the SETT/Glowmentor dinner in September, and chatted for a while, but hey, that was a long time ago.) So they were immediately able to recognise each other’s voices whereas it took me much longer.
I was fascinated to observe the very strong desire amongst participants not to be seen as elitist, a difficult thing to avoid, because when setting up the conference, contributors have to be invited to join. (People can ask to join, but obviously only if they know about it.) And yet, the group at its biggest, with 8 or 9 people was almost too big to be really inclusive. It would have needed a very skilled leader to include everyone in a way that didn’t threaten them, especially those with, on this occasion, limited communication equipment such as me. What if we’d been discussing something contentious?
Someone towards the close (Neil?) suggested that the next session should involve everyone presenting for 1 or 2 minutes “to share knowledge of the Marratech tools”. Having a laugh or what? But no, no-one in the group baulked at this. So that was a fairly effective evaluation. I knew then that I was in the Yellow group! The challenge was way beyond my ZPD! But subsequent email communication (!) has opened up the session to anyone who wants to take part, contributing or not.
So now what?
I would be more comfortable joining the next session if I had the same technical equipment as everyone else, so I’m raiding my Chartered-Teacher-bonus piggy bank (again) to buy a microphone. But what does that tell me about the future participants in my school and in my classes? At school and at home? In Scottish Borders and elsewhere? Inclusion?
I would learn a lot from observing the next session, with people showing off their skills in manipulating parts of the environment, but no way would I feel able to take part. I never mind making mistakes in public - hey, I’m well used to it – but I just don’t have a clue where to start. What does that tell me about people who do mind making mistakes in public – ie many of the staff I’ve done In-Service for?
If I learned more about it, would I be happy demonstrating this to others? Was the performance of the technology a good advert for the project? Hmm. It wasn’t comfortable, and it only seemed manageable to me because I’ve used similar things before. But is there any other way I could communicate simultaneously with 8 people across the country? Not really.
In the future, our kids will look back on these early days with wonder. “Did they really put up with those flickering images, poor lip synch and dodgy sounds? However did they manage?”
