I think it will take me awhile to shift from my concept of twitter as a social networking site solely for stalking my favorite celebrities. I can see the value of being able to communicate with people in the same field looking for information in different venues, collaborative work can be done through social networking. Makes me wonder what would've happened between Newton and Leibniz if social media was as fast then as it is now. Did they both discover calculus? Did one copy the other? The world may speculate indefinitely. (I take more interest in the personal stories of these men then in either of their accomplishments as mathematicians; and so I remember their story from my FST class. Do I remember everything about it? Nope.)
The exercise of the webinar was not particularly successful in my view, I have several reasons for my opinion. The "backdoor" conversation on Twitter for one. The technical difficulties for another. I believe that the webinar would've been much more successful if it'd been on our own time, the way that we did the informational webinar last spring. I liked the ideas of Buffy and Sue's Media 21 project, and am interested to know more, but the format of the webinar did not work for me. I would be better suited to direct e-mails or following the blog, that way I have text to refer to later. The technical difficulties were the most problematic for me. I found the extra squeaks and white noise so distracting that by the time they were finally eliminated, I had completely lost the verbal thread of the conversation and had to rely on the chat window. Which did hold some interesting points, but I feel that I missed a lot. The recording's sound is perfect on my computer so I think the issue was isolated to Kristin's computer and I hope she gets that sorted out before she needs to do another one.
If I were to hold a webinar of this type with my high school class, it would be limited to one person having control of the keyboard and nobody else being on a computer. Any questions could be asked by asking the facilitator to type in the questions. This would cut back on extra conversations, though it'd have the same issues that any other viewing activity would have in a high school.
I have not found or read my picks for the Edubloggers yet, I intend to write another blog when I find the ones that I want to follow. For now, I'm gonna finish up my research for the wiki project and get that squared away. Plus it'll give me time to cool off about twitter. Still not 100% on board with it.
More on life later,
~Ren
I also started thinking about how the webinar might (or might not) work in a high school classroom after Friday. Since I had trouble concentrating during it, I imagine high schoolers would as well. Does that mean a webinar won't work, or that I would need to think about ways to keep them engaged? I'm not sure, but it is interesting to think about. Ha, I have SUCH a different perspective on my classes now that I am studying to be a teacher.
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