I missed session five, and quickly realised how helpful it’s been to have some dedicated time to work on blog postings, investigate technologies and tools, and check on what others in the project are doing.
During the past few weeks I’ve been finding out a bit more about VOIP tools that could be used to communicate via the Internet with students using voice and picture. Some of these allow taking over the keyboard - great for demonstrating search techniques to our distance students, or students at other campuses. Elluminate’s vRoom is one software, Wimba is another (and likely to be the chosen product at MIT). I received a comment on this blog to look at Mikogo, which also allows screen/keyboard sharing. I have a microphone headset to experiment with – so am waiting for the software to be available on campus.
Learning more about using an interactive whiteboard was the initial aim of my project. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to have the notepad software put on a computer in our training room in anticipation of getting a whiteboard next year. Having some practice with the notepad will mean that we’re able to make the most of the features of the whiteboard. Waiting for a response from ICTS re: my request to have notepad added…
