ejourneys

 ”Pardon, did you say that it is a 3 1/2 hour drive away?….”

“Yes, that is the travelling time to be allowed from Melbourne to Hawkesdale by car.”

Hence, plans were made to change the face to face interviews we were to particpate in, to an online interview – a far more appropriate application, considering the topic at hand.

Our school  was invited to be a part of a  research project, which is being conducted by Dr Ric Canale and Dr Pam Macintyre of the Faculty of Education at The University of Melbourne for the Victorian Education Channel.

The aim of this study is to look at how online communities in schools are used by teachers and students and how effective they are in terms of learning and developing supportive relationships. The information that we gather will be used to propose models for use in safe, collaborative environments and will assist the design of the Collaborative Online Communities space in the Victorian Education Channel.

Selected students from grades 6 through to 10 were chosen to be part of this survey. Their online experiences included

• virtual classrooms
• videoconferencing with skype to Korea and Warrnambool schools
• blogging
• digital storytelling
• particpating in the rich picture case studies grant/podcasting
• some maintain a myspace or other online social spaces

Elluminate was used for this session and the survey was recorded. (SKype is blocked at the University of Melbourne.) We had several problems in setting up the software initially on the desktop connected to the whiteboard in the library but otherwise it was a useful tool, in that it allowed the following

• videoconferencing (when needed)
• chat
• audio
• user friendly tool box
• emoticons
• 2 way share features-shared text and url links between the 2 locations
• Good save features – for both chat and whiteboard work

It does take some time to load though.

Problems

Sound was a problem at times as some students are still shy with the mcirophone and a prep class came in and shared the library space which created undue background noise at time.

Overall, it was a very useful activity and made us reflect on our achievements, the resultant impact on personal classroom teaching and connectedness with the communities that we have established. It was interesting to hear the student comments, reflections and opinions. (They all still preferred a face to face teacher.) The results and the content of this survey will be covered in later posts.