Web-Conferencing

For our group project, we met utilizing a video conferencing tool.  A benefit to using a video conferencing tool is that you can see the people you are talking to and can take facial expressions into consideration when talking.  It was nice to be able to take care of the project in such a short time frame once we all got together; however, a pitfall to video conferencing is setting up a time that everyone can join the conference.  Our group had difficulty finding a time that worked for everyone.  We could have had our information exchanged in much less time by utilizing another resource, such as email or a collaborative document than waiting for a time that fit into everyone’s schedule.  As with any technology, there are pros and cons.

I have only used video conferencing a couple times, but this was the first time I used Google Hangout as a video conferencing tool.  I was impressed with the technology as I have never talked with multiple people with a video conferencing tool before.  We all had to set up Google+ accounts and activate a few plug-ins to make the system work, but once we did, it worked well.  We also used some features such as “Chat”, “Posts in our Stream” and utilizing desktop images.

We were able to cover a lot of information in a short amount of time; however, there were some things that probably should have been covered during the conference.  Not all of us seemed to know what the project was about or what was expected.  I believe that if all of us looked over the information before we started, and possibly shared a document with things to cover during the chat, we might have been more productive during the actual conference.

In the classroom, this might be a great tool to interview others for a report, such as professors, doctors, or other professionals in the field researching.  This might also be a great tool to communicate with sister schools – like connecting a foreign language class with another school in the world with that native language.  Another idea would be to share projects with other schools via this technology.  I was able to record our conversation utilizing Camtasia - which can be viewed below.  I am excited for the possibilities!