Video Conferencing

Last week in our communications technology class we had a video conference with the Royal Tyrell Museum. I'm normally the first person to dive into new technologies, but I have to admit I was a bit apprehensive. I've always enjoyed the idea of video conferencing as a social networking medium. Skype is one of the best ideas for staying in contact over long distances for this generation. Software like this effectively shrinks our world. However, my experience with technology tells me that it never works properly when you're on a strict time schedule.

In my first year of university, classes were large (as you might expect), and because of this projectors, microphones, and touchscreen computers were all used to “assist” professors in lecturing to such a large crowd. What this meant was that I could always walk into class fifteen minutes late without missing a thing. Such experiences have shaped my view of introducing new technologies into the classroom.

Another concern of mine was that it would be boring, ineffective, or just plain awkward to have students being taught by an interactive television program. In fact, I did at first find it very awkward to interact with the presenter throught the television. I knew he could see us and interact with us, but something in the back or my head kept telling me, “this is a television program.” However, that only lasted about ten minutes.

Once I was sufficiently topped up with coffee, and about halfway into the interactive trivia portion of the presentation, I realized that the video conference was actually a very immersive experience. While I could easily set up some kind of interactive whiteboard game for students, the benefit comes with having an expert on the subject matter virtually present in the classroom. While taking a class on a field trip to the museum would be possible, it would be far more expensive, and the logistics would be an ordeal. As it was explained to us, booking and setting up the video conference is actually a relatively simple task. Also, if something happened to go wrong with the video conferencing equipment it would probably be a minor consideration compared to a mishap on a field trip outside the city.

When the conference was over we looked on the internet for other ways in which video conferencing technology could be useful in the classroom. The one which caught my eye was the use of video conferencing to talk to people in other countries. This would be a great asset to have for children in various language classes to practice normal speech with native speakers. Although time zones would be an issue with this activity, I feel that the experience would be invaluable to students.