I attend educational webcast or webinars frequently. In fact, I consider webcasts to be one of the greatest forms of professional development I have available to me. During this week, I have been on the road and have been attending a workshop on the Interactive Whiteboard and Clickers hosted by Dr. Robert Marzano Research Laboratories. I have attended webinars and followed Dr. Marzano’s research on the interactive whiteboard since it began which is now almost three years. Without the ability to attend webinars, it would have been highly unlikely I would have been able to follow his work this closely. I also attend Discovery webinars and Smarteducation webinars frequently. The number one strength of the webinar is it brings the learning opportunities to the comfort of one’s own schedule, as most are recorded and available for playback at your convenience. My work schedule is so hectic I would seldom have the opportunity to attend a webinar if I had to attend them in real time. However, there are advantages to attending webcasts live, the number one reason being you have the opportunity to interact and ask questions during the session. This was my first experience with EdTech Talk. I checked out several of the recorded episodes from the site. The convenience of being able to download the audio file (mp3) is strength of the webcasting community. This allows the busy educator an opportunity to add the audio file to their iPod play list and learn on the go. A final strength I will mention is the quality of the content available to learners because of the capability of this technology. Just a short time ago, opportunities for teachers or students to learn from experts was a luxury only a few could afford. However, today we all have the opportunity to learn from the experts in their field. I see this as the greatest strength for brining webcasts to your classroom as well. No longer are our students limited to learning second hand! In addition, as I explored the EdTech Talk site, I thought some of their topics would be great discussion starters for high school students. An example of this would be the Instructional Design episode, which reveals on average students in online learning environments performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. Does this surprise you? Why do you think this is so? What might be some reasons to support these findings?
With the broadcasting, services readily available to the public webcasts have plenty of opportunities for the classroom. Not only from the perspective of bringing experts to your students, but also from the point of view of allowing your students to become experts on certain topics and share their learning through broadcasting a webcast. Another supportive role of webcasts for the classroom is the ability for a teacher to offer additional support for struggling students or enrichment opportunities for students moving a faster pace.
Posted on July 30th, 2010 by Terri Stice
Filed under: Uncategorized
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