Web Conference Reflection

I attended Cindy Cummings' web conference held on Wednesday, March 16. I had never participated in a web conference before, and I can now understand how valuable a tool web conferencing could be in the classroom. I'd love to implement this tool, provided the campus infrastructure allows for its use. We all loved one commenter's suggestion of requiring students to virtually "raise their hand" and be called on before speaking, as the sheer number of responses can sometimes become overwhelming and confusing. Once I do begin utilizing web conferencing in the classroom, I'd like to use the format we used in this class where several conferences are scheduled over the duration of the course and students are required to attend at least one at their convenience. One drawback of web conferencing is the potential to get off-track, which happened several times during our Wednesday conference. Also, at one point, two students began arguing over a political issue, which was quite irritating and time-wasting. But, they were soon redirected to the topic at hand. My favorite part of the web conference was learning of several digital tools that I have since explored and found awesome for classroom use, such as Prezi.com.