Communication

Between you and your students

How do you communicate?

• Go to the “#1 Communication page” and answer the question “ What methods do you use to communicate with your students?”

• Does synchronous (real-time) or asynchronous (not real-time) matter?

Staying in Touch: Basic Premise

• Use tools and resources that – Students are familiar with– May be integrated with each other– Enable engagement and contributions by students

• Communication occurs between– You and your students– Among your students– External people (e.g. guests) and your students

Communicating “Expertise”

Guest speaker or live office hours: Video conferencing (e.g. Vyew, Dimdim)– Presenter on video, can share slides or

applications, sees who’s online– Online participants can be given the microphone,

can engage in chats among themselves, raise questions or comments or Instructor can project the online classroom

– Some online, real-time classroom management and experimentation needed

– *Also useful for collaboration

Mini-Activity: 5 minutes

• Explore a live Vyew session as a guest: http://vyew.com/room#/info/overvyew

• Does it have potential?

Sharing Resources & Content

Course Blog (web log)• Postings in chronological order• Good for “content” (text, images, video)• Useful if you have regular updates or announcements

– Students can use an RSS reader to get your information (without having to go to your site)

• Wide range of free tools to create blogs now (see resources)

• Can enable comments• Example: http://www.therockblog.com/

Course Wiki• See our site as an example

Less Structured Discussions

• Useful for office hours, real-time Q&A, brainstorming, feedback

• Not for in-depth discussions or those requiring a record

• Instant Messaging (IM): Messenger, AIM, AOL, Yahoo, Google, etc.– Not really suitable for instruction, may be used by students

amongst themselves– Difficulties for instructor to bring everyone together with one

tool/in one environment due to different accounts

Less Structured Discussions

• Embedded chat– Within an existing environment (Blackboard, course

website)– People who are present can engage in dialogue– Separate account not needed

• Mini-activity:– In the chat box located in our workshop site, engage

in a text-based Q&A about the topic of communication and tool use (no talking please)