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February 14, 2007
Barb Warner, Elluminate, and IM
Barb Warner at the University of South Florida has been using a course teaching product called Elluminate in her intro to MIS class. She summarized some of her experiences in a recent email to TeachingMIS:
"I have used Elluminate in several settings. I have used it for office hours - where students can just sign in & I can answer questions. I also do this using IM. For office hours- both are very useful. I like IM better in some ways because I can have separate conversations/windows with each student & it is easier that way to stay organized when 'talking' with 20 students at once. With Elluminate - the messages fly by all on one screen & it's difficult to keep track of them & students aren't always sure who you are responding to. However, with Elluminate - I can do application sharing & show skills, and it's very easy to talk to all at one time. In IM's favor, students can easily send me a file & I can examine/troubleshoot their work - so that is a nice feature too. So both have their strengths.
"I also use Elluminate for exam reviews for my online class. We all sign on & I have a PowerPoint of questions that I load onto the whiteboard & the students can use polling to select the right answers. While this is going on, I can see what each student has selected & the % of students who chose each answer & then we can discuss that. That is very popular and effective. I can also allow them to write on the whiteboard/PowerPoint - which most have fun with. Another nice feature is that I can record each session & go back & see who was there & what was said. I can also make the recording available to students. This can't be done with IM.
"I have also used Elluminate for meetings with my TAs, conferences with others across the country, and sat in on a class that had a debate via Elluminate. I also took an online class on interactive media & we used Elluminate for trouble shooting projects & it was nice to be able to view the recording of the session if you had to go back & check something out again."
An interesting (but poorly done) video on the use of Elluminate for secondary education in England is on here (YouTube). Also, if you're willing to give your name and contact info, you can download a demo of Elluminate from here.
Posted by DavidK at February 14, 2007 05:53 PM | Permalink