Attend a conference lately? I have. In fact, last week felt odd because I wasn’t at a conference. FETC, Discovery National Conference, IL-TCE and MACUL all in the last month. At each conference I heard the same general comment, “I’m overwhelmed.” Conferences are great, you connect with peers from all over, learning the latest and greatest from experts in a variety of fields. However, many times it’s difficult to absorb what you learn in a day’s sessions and even harder to apply it back in you district or school. Is there a (easy)solution for this problem?
Tapping the power of the Discovery Educator Network. I want to see what you think first, always ask your network for advice. Please take the poll below and we’ll see if we can tackle this problem together. Knowing my network extends beyond the DEN, I’ll also reach out to my other networks MACULSpace, ICE and of course my twitterverse. I’ll keep this poll open through next Monday. Then, I’ll post possible solutions along with conferences where we’ll put these solutions to the test. I taught science, you’ll see this type of experimentation a lot from me.
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Can’t wait to see the results? I understand, view them here.
Do you feel a buzz? If you do, it just might be the flurry of activity that’s happening in Second Life! After a great meeting last week to talk about what the DEN’s presence in Second Life should look like, we’ve got a fantastic group of STAR’s who have volunteered to take the reigns and make it all happen.
So where do things stand? Well at this point we have a construction crew who have chosen a new house for the DEN to reside in and are in the process of customizing it to our needs. The events chairs are busy planning a DEN kick off event, dates and details to be forthcoming. And there’s a freebie cube in the DEN house right now where you can get T-Shirts, laptops, and other Discovery schwag that you can wear proudly!
If you have a Second Life, don’t forget to join the Discovery Educator Network group. Then IM me (Demb Oh) and let me know who you are so I can promote you to STAR status!
Here’s a few shots from some recent activity within Second Life:
I’ve posted a couple of times about Vyew, a free web conferencing site that I’m pretty fond of, but recently someone referred me over to another one worth checking out. While there’s quite a few contenders in the video/web conferencing arena, Yugma is one of only three free ones that are worth checking out right now.
Yugma is java based, so it’ll run on both Windows and Mac. If you’re version of Java is out of date, it’s a free download to upgrade it. Its biggest strength also happens to be its biggest weakness: it’s simple. Really simple. Total breeze to get running and begin a conference with other people. Voice is handled via teleconference and all the info you need is right there at the top of your screen. I like using teleconference for the voice because it saves you precious bandwidth that you’ll need for screen sharing.
It has public and private chat, whiteboarding, and the ability to share a desktop. That’s it. Seriously, that’s everything. Of course, sharing a desktop is incredibly powerful because you can use that to do Powerpoints or Keynotes, to demonstrate websites, show images, etc… And since that’s all there is, there’s no way to get confused. During my test, I have to admit that sharing was pretty smooth. Not smooth enough to share videos that way, but impressive for a free service.
Oh yeah, there are a few restrictions with the free service. You can only have 10 people in the conference at a time. You can’t record your sessions, nor can you make use of the 100mb of shared space that the paid accounts receive. Then again, you can’t really complain too much about not getting every feature when they are providing the basic service for no cost at all.
Anyway, if you’re branching out into the wide world of webinars or need a way to patch somebody in remotely for a meeting or class, Yugma is worth checking out.
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