As a follow up from yesterday (here), I find that too many bells and whistles can be distracting from the actual instructions. I've used quiz taking applications as a part of a multi-day online training, but polls? pointing out where I live on a map? breakout rooms? These are things I eschew for the most part for many reasons. In this seminar, the facilitator used all of these things within fifteen minutes and did it in a manner that was effecting, engaging, and seamless. This was a lesson to me about how these tangential applications can be used effectively by a skilled facilitator. I was very impressed, but I should have been, these are pros providing a lecture on the topic.
On the other end of the spectrum, when fleshing out different applications to use for our own virtual classroom experience we looked at several. One, among the largest and most well known, the one that was backed by a large multi-national company, with a long history, the sales rep who led the audience of twenty-five through his sales presentation:
- Had technical difficulties at the start
- The leader did not know the features that were a part of his application well enough to answer questions
- Began the seminar without showing his video or face (which I think is a miss)
- When he did turn on his camera we saw a background of an unmade bed and dirty laundry, and
- After fifteen minutes the system froze up and kicked the entire audience out
It truly was one of the worst experiences (especially a sales experience) I've been a part of. It highlighted for me that knowing the application backward and forward is the true measure of the facilitator. In both these cases, the first where the dog wagged the tail, the second where the tail wagged the dog, it was a story of the power and the hazards of technology for classrooms.
No comments:
Post a Comment