The distance education tool, Elluminate Live is a tool for real-time learning over the internet. Several colleges have invested in Elluminate Live and is great to use for online classes or distance learning. It is an online conferencing system that allows you to meet with others in a virtual meeting room. Using a head set and microphone, those in the virtual meeting room can communicate through voice and chat. There is also a visual in which we can view the sites of someone presenting and use the whiteboard as well to write on.
During the online conference, a lot of information was shared. Together with the class in the online conference was our instructor, Mr. John Jenkins, as well as two guest speakers, Marian Campo and Bree Reynolds. They both were a great help because they explained and shared a lot of helpful information that we could all use as future teachers. It was very interesting to hear about online tools that they were using in the U.S. and in the middle east.
The positives of Elluminate Live was that we could easily go onto the site from the invite in our email and downloading the program didn't take more than a few minutes. Once we got on, we could hear the speaker and communicate through chat in the smaller window. The guest speakers showed us some good sites, and it was overall very informative. The whiteboard was also a really interesting and useful tool that we used during the online conference. Though there were many postives, there were some negatives to the tool as well. Using my laptop with the Windows Vista program, I had much difficulty opening the program after it was downloaded. During the conference, we could only listen to one person at a time because the microphone was only open to one person. If someone forgot to turn their mic off, the no one could use it. Some of the sounds that came through were also delayed at times.
During the online conference, a lot of information was shared. Together with the class in the online conference was our instructor, Mr. John Jenkins, as well as two guest speakers, Marian Campo and Bree Reynolds. They both were a great help because they explained and shared a lot of helpful information that we could all use as future teachers. It was very interesting to hear about online tools that they were using in the U.S. and in the middle east.
The positives of Elluminate Live was that we could easily go onto the site from the invite in our email and downloading the program didn't take more than a few minutes. Once we got on, we could hear the speaker and communicate through chat in the smaller window. The guest speakers showed us some good sites, and it was overall very informative. The whiteboard was also a really interesting and useful tool that we used during the online conference. Though there were many postives, there were some negatives to the tool as well. Using my laptop with the Windows Vista program, I had much difficulty opening the program after it was downloaded. During the conference, we could only listen to one person at a time because the microphone was only open to one person. If someone forgot to turn their mic off, the no one could use it. Some of the sounds that came through were also delayed at times.
I would really like to use this program in the classroom, but I think it would word best if used in the upper grades who are more advanced with using computers. This is a great tool to use, and many should take advantage of it if it is available in their school. I think teachers can use this program for use when they want to have a guest speaker in the class who is unable to make it. This is especially useful for distance learning where guest speakers from the states or even world wide could speak to a class. Since we live on an island that is very far from many places, this could really benefit many people. Overall, I thought this program was very interesting and I enjoyed using it for the first time.
