I was so excited to participate in my virtual conference last Friday. My parents taught in Wayne-Westland for 3o-some years and they told me wonderful things about Mary Jane Mielke, so I couldn't wait to get some good information from her. Perhaps I was a little too eager, as were some of my other classmates, because she was being bombarded with questions and could not address all of them.
As a participant in the conference, it was difficult to know when to type a question or answer because there was no indication of when another person was responding. Because of this, the conversation seemed fragmented and hard to follow. Maybe I have an unusual perspective on these online conversations, because I have never used instant messaging or anything of the like...
Although I learned a lot from Mary Jane about technological applications in the classroom, I think the conversation would have been more effective with fewer participants. That way she could address more questions, and the conversation may have seemed more intimate and connected. But then again, maybe not - maybe this is just the way virtual conversations are!
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Hi Courtney,
You are not alone in feeling the way you do about how our chat went--and it's certainly not because you don't use instant messaging! Poor Mary Jane WAS being bombarded with questions. You should read Emily Eller's blog and my response, if you'd like.
You know, I think it definitely would be helpful to have an indication of when another person is responding. In many messaging systems, it will tell you when the other person is typing. I don't see why they couldn't do that for TappedIn. And it sure would make it better. We still might not be able to talk about as much as we'd like, but I think it might prevent the participants from overlapping comments like we did.
Thanks for your reflections. Do your parents have any insights to offer about WW? They might be a nice resource for an online chat... :)
Thanks for the comments, Courtney. I most surely agree that had we been able to have fewer participants it would have been more effective in terms of getting people's questions posed and answered. Pulling back the curtain a bit, I should tell you that coordinating 6 simultaneous conversations was no small task, and there was a lot of advance prep/logistics involved in pulling all of that together. Liz and I definitely had our hands full!
Having said that, I think that the feature in which you are notified that someone is in the process of responding would have been useful...it is probably worth our noting for next time, as chat veterans probably inferred this, with newbies needed a little time to figure out what was going on.
It's very cool that your folks were teachers and that they taught in W-W. They should be great resources to you as you prep for your own student teaching (which I assume will be in W-W as well).
Hey Courtney, I've really been trying to push this whole "Chaz and Dee" thing. I hope you have too!
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