Cam’s Ramblings

I like Windows Live Messenger (WLM, formerly known as the ‘Microsoft Network’, or MSN). I’ve been a user of this program for many years, and have been quite impressed by its continual improvement. It began as a simple chat client, became a great tool for keeping in touch with specific friends through the power of instant messaging, allowed you to speak in real time to a person at another computer, let you share files with each other and now you can video call.

I am all for the advancement of these sorts of programs. Recent years have seen the introduction of VOIP, a protocol which allows users to easily talk to each other through the internet. One of my subjects earlier this year required us to participate in an online lecture where we all listened in and were able to communicate with the lecturer (who was sitting in her office) by pressing a single button. She would know who wanted to speak, and would give control of the ‘lecture theatre’ to them.

But anyway I was using WLM earlier today to chat to a few friends. I had several windows open, and I was typing away madly to a few people, and actually talking to one. Despite all the advances in the software, and the hardware Microsoft must have in place to operate such a network, it still has its bugs. And some of them are quite significant.

My home connection is not great. I believe it is the slowest speed they can call broadband (256k or something like that). I’ve used Skype and WLM to talk to people before, and there is a noticeable difference between the two. WLM, which has evolved over time is the inferior to the new player Skype, which was purpose built. Maybe it’s just my shoddy connection,but I struggled to maintain a decent conversation tonight using WLM.

So here lies the question – how do we harness this technology in the classroom (I seem to ask that alot these days!)? I’m working with a great teacher next year who has been doing some great things for e-learning, and I hope to learn a lot from him. One of the things I would love to do is set up a series of ‘online classes’, especially for my VCE classes as they approach exams for them to contact me in an easy manner and get some real time help. I don’t know whether such a network is already in place, maybe it’s something worth investigating. Maybe it’ll be a big flop. I know many staff are using websites, blogs and wikis to share information, I’m just hoping to push the barrier one further next year!

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 20th, 2008 at 12:30 am and is filed under Teaching, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.