Our group chose to use Vyew as our web-conferencing tool. As I mentioned in my previous blog, there were some technical difficulties, particularly with my internet going in and out and the occasional times when the program almost “froze” during our conversation. I think because of all these technical problems, the web conference became rather time-consuming and frustrating for our group. Many of my members mentioned that they wished we could just use Skype instead to talk about our project.
Looking back, I haven’t had as many problems using Skype to talk to people. However, Vyew did have some advantages since it allowed us to view slides and even write on the program as a group. Although it comes later on in our web-conference, our group used this feature to type out what components each person would be completing for our Leadership Project. As a group, we decided that everyone would contribute to the creation of the storyboard about Wiki’s, but the responsibilities for the creation of our stand alone professional development tutorial would be as follows: Stacy and Allyson create the presentation slides, I work on the slidecast/voiceover, and then Lisa works on the final editing of our tutorial. After deciding how to divide up the work load, we then were able to type on the program appropriate due dates for each member.
To be honest, I think this might have been more time-efficient if we started the entire process using Google Docs. In fact, our group decided that the remainder of our work will be completed using Google Docs. We will create our storyboard using this program and then just rely upon the chat feature to talk to one another about our work. I think this will be more practical for our group. The web-conference tool through Vyew was more frustrating and felt like wasted time during portions. I think this was partially because our servers were going in and out, but we also had one member who couldn’t even get her “voice” feature to work. Also, when we spoke, we always had to turn on and off the “voice” button or there was massive echo. We eventually started to do where we “raised our hand” before speaking, but I would be lying if I didn’t find the process annoying. I think the fact that Vyew is free is great, but perhaps that is why there are some kinks to the system.
The web-conference provided us a merge of Skype and Google Docs (webcam visual with live documents to write on), but the fact that the program was so slow and stubborn for certain group members made it not feel like a useful resource. I am more confident in our next meeting this upcoming week using Google Docs. I think we will be just as effective in terms of communication, but hopefully will no longer have the frustration of delayed responses and being kicked off the program.
Awesome reflection. Your experience was obviously frustrating at times, but hopefully you learned from it. I like the group's solution to meet via Google Docs. This has become an excellent collaboration tool...both asynchronously and synchronously. Keep up the great work. Congrats on being done with school. :)
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