1st Webinar a Success

I hosted our first webinar yesterday and it seems to have been quite successful. I didn't have a huge participation level, but I think that is a good thing for the first time. Had it failed miserably it would have been very embarrassing if there were tens of participants trying to get in.

We used GoToMeeting as it gave us room for 15 people during the trial phase. Although we were not collaborating during the webinar those features seemed decent and my trials with friends and functioned very well. I've participated in many different webinars and I would say the only thing I wasn't really keen on is that the chat area seemed "thin" and I could not expand it horizontally so that I could see more responses. It could be a few lines thicker.

As an organizer it seemed to function well. I was able to give controls to the presenter and them use them seamlessly to present their slides. I had 2 PowerPoint screens open on one of my monitors and the actual slide show opened on my other monitor. I flipped from my opening slides to the presenter's slides, previously gave them mouse control and she began immediately. I may try this slightly different the next time, but it seemed to work well.

Since the presenter was my supervisor, when she started referencing other documents I was able to open them up and drag them onto the screen for the participants to see as well. That was a great feature. Instead of her just walking through it on her side and the participants looking at the document on their side, I brought it up and continued to point to the items she was addressing. (This is the entire point of being able to do a webinar obviously.) It was simple to be able to share other documents other than just a slide show.

I had tried DimDim also as a trial with a colleague, but she could not hear my mic for some reason. I thought thought that it's interface was really nice, simple and user friendly. I may retry it again in the future. I also sat in on a WebEx webinar today and really liked it's platform as well. I guess it comes down to budget and which one falls within yours.

A few comments to remember when hosting. We started of the session with me explaining that we would be communicating through the chat, but because some people joined late and had dialed in they assumed that they could talk over the phone to the group. I'm not sure how to avoid this confusion as the presented did ask the participants during her presentation to type their answers in to the chat area. One person emailed us today and was wondering why no one was answer her when she talked. (Important for participants to show up early to webinar and make sure they get the instructions and can connect.)

I had one person have trouble dialling in to the conference number. She called my phone directly and told me that it kept telling her the line was disconnected. I didn't' know how to respond to her because I could see that others had been able to dial in to the session. I could only tell her to continue to try. She did eventually get connected. (Important for participants to show up early to webinar and make sure they get the instructions and can connect.)

I'm doing another session on July 14th so I'll see if any other developments come out of that one. For now we are thrilled with the results and believe we will try to host several others for our teams.

e-Tools & Tips Recorded for Your Listening Pleasure

Yesterday I posted some upcoming webinars being hosted by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework.

Jyothi Jayaram from the E-Learning Networks Project at AFLF was kind enough to email me back yesterday and let me know that yes indeed the sessions are recorded for our listening pleasure.

If you happen to be somewhere else in the world sleeping when these sessions are happening you can catch them later at:

http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/flx/go/home/projects/2007/pid/440

Elluminate Free Webinar's (and Edubloggerworld Kickoff)

So I'm looking around my Reader today reading up on what I have been missing out on over the past few days (mini holiday), and I come across Victoria Davis' Cool Cat Teacher Blog mentioning the EduBloggerWorld kickoff on Thursday. I see that she mentions that she is hosting a little Elluminate session on Thursday....I go over to Elluminate. Heard of it a billion times in my online courses, never participated, yet! I then did a quick search through the Events link to see if I could see her session.

No, BUT!!!!!!

There are 3 pretty neat and FREE sessions coming up by Lance Dublin.

Back-To-Basics: Developing An E-Learning Strategy And Architecture
Lance Dublin
2007-09-27
02:00 PM - 03:00 PM Eastern
Enroll now!

Back-To-Basics: Implementing E-Learning Successfully
Lance Dublin
2007-11-01
02:00 PM - 03:00 PM Eastern
Enroll now!

Back-To-Basics: Understanding And Applying Learning 2.0
Lance Dublin
2007-11-29
02:00 PM - 03:00 PM Eastern
Enroll now!