D Chuick
Lamar University Graduate Student
Masters of Education – Educational Leadership
EA1198

I chose to follow the directions posted via email on February 27, 2011: ”If you missed the recording, you may watch the recording, reflect on that review of the web conference in your blog, and then send me your blog address so I can view your comments in your blog.”

Reflections of Web Cast held on February 27, 2011

The objective behind the requirement for this course was to expose people to this new technology and this new way of communicating. The exposure afforded a graduate student through this assignment requirement is a tremendous step toward changing the education landscape in the near future. If we, as educational leaders, do not understand how to adapt our old ways of communicating into this new world, we will get left behind as “invalid”. Students will ignore our vast wealth of knowledge merely because we don’t know how to speak their language.

As the webcast began, I began to sense the frustration of both those presenting and those attending. Many of those that were logging into the web chat were unaware of the methodology of the technology. Setting aside the variant span of skills participants held for the practical steps of participation, the most noticeable difficulty appeared in the use of the web chat function.

Web casting skills are quite different than the well-established skills we use during a face-to-face conversation. Evident by the behavior of the participant’s in this webcast, inexperienced people tried to converse quickly, in an informal manner. Many were attempting to participate in discussions as if they were face-to-face. This behavior lead the presenters to show non-verbal signs of frustration and to emphasize through voice inflection those participants should cease.

While I continued to read the chat logs, listen to the participants and watch the non-verbal body language of those on camera, I made a few notes as to the simple rules of web chat.

First, web cast times should be presented to include an established “log-in” period. During this stated “log-in” period, all persons joining the web chat can work to get video, audio and the professors can choose the presenters. Much like staff development has a sign-in period, those attending should respect that there is a deadline for social discussion and a start time for the academic part of the presentation.

Secondly, the rules for conversation during web casting should be made at the beginning. Most people involved in this required assignment use the same conversation skills during all encounters – both oral and written – and may have forgotten how those skills were learned. Placed into a new situation, where their technology skills are taxed, they fail to adapt simple rules like “Don’t interrupt when someone is talking”, “Listen to the conversation for verbal clues to answer your own questions” and “Use correct grammar and polite syntax when requesting information” to this new technology venue. For example, if the 99 people had been a part of a freshman political science lecture or a staff benefits meeting, they would not have continued to write the social conversations past the professor’s start time (5:05). Also, they would have followed the oral conversation and filtered out answers to their own questions.