Yesterday I had three really great conversations with teachers about new tools, threaded discussions, and adoption challenges of these electronic things. One of the conversations was in G+ and it was my colleague, Thatcher, doing a session about Online Communication.
We started in G+ and moved to Collaborate. The second event was one of the POT sessions and we started in Fb using the chat and we then moved to Hoot.me.
Finally, last night I spent an hour with the POT mentors.
[ no picture, sorry ]
I am hoping that these newer digital tools, and the telephone, are all parts of our communication. I like to write, like I am now, but I also like to hear my voice. I like to hear others and because I cannot plan anything, I tend to do most of my asking, wondering, and creating, in a kind of sporadic and fuzzy fashion. Hearing someone ask a question makes me think. I need that.
I invite any of my mentees or others to communicate with me via email ( toddconaway@gmail.com ) to set up phone conversations, G+ sessions, chat session, email sessions, Twitter sessions or whatever if they have questions, ideas or concerns.
We live in a time of rich communication. We can stand in front of one another in a park and share ideas, we can use a phone to hear others across the oceans, and we can sit in our offices and see and hear several others from all around the world! How amazing! Now we just have to ask good questions and give thoughtful responses.
I keep thinking about student skill levels and the “threshold of overwhelmingness” (gotta coin something better than that) that we don’t want to push students too far past. Google hangouts are very simple to operate and participate in, but even getting to that point (Google acct, joining G+…) can be, well, too much for some students. Anything gets less intimidating with practise, but pushing the envelope can be scary for instructors.
I want to learn more about how teachers handle this.
Wow, exploring 3 platforms in one session.
Must be an experience. I havnt tried G+ Hangout yet. Interested to explore it with potcert11 participants .
@rucsb
Actually, I like that “threshold of overwhelmingness”.
I might use it somewhere.
It’s not just the students, but everywhere there are those who try hard to stay clear of that threshold, while others seem eager to find out whats on the other side.