Web-Conferencing

When I started this “Video Conferencing” lab I was hoping we would be able to use Adobe Connect, but I quickly learned that this would only be feasible if we had two people in our group. I then tried DimDim, but they are no longer accepting new registrations, so that was out. I took a look at Vyew and was not that impressed, so we ended up using Skype, which was new for me.

After we determined that we would use Skype I checked into whether our discussion could be recorded using Skype, and it could not, so on goes the search. In the end we ended up using Skype and recording with VodBurner and I also took screenshots using Smart Notebook; because that is what I had available while we were on vacation.


The video conference, over-all, went fairly well. It was a little difficult trying to do this while we were in Mackinaw and staying in a hotel, but it was sufficient. Our group had a difficult time coordinating and determining when our conference would take place; we first tried to come up with a time using our group’s discussion forum in Angel, but that was unsuccessful. In the end I called everyone and set it up that way.


After our meeting, I was trying to share the VodBurner recording with the other group members, but could not get it to load at the hotel, so I had to wait until I got home. When I finally had a fast enough connection I learned that the best way for me to share this recording was to upload it to YouTube and share the code to embed the video on our blogs. When I was able to get the video to work I was disappointed at the quality of the video. Because we had four people in on the conversation the image flickers between people when they are talking. The quality of the sound, while using VodBurner, was decent, but I probably would not use VodBurner with groups with more than two people. Jing would be the ideal tool for recording this, but with the free version only five minutes can be recorded at a time.

For the purpose of the classroom, it would be a lot of fun to use this tool to communicate with other classes around the world, but some time differences could cause issues. It would also be fun to use when student have a big project coming due, but with 7th graders I could see them abusing it, or because a lot of my student do not have access to the internet, I could see it causing issues with the parents of my students.