Well, the solution to bandwidth problems is fairly simple… I’m moving to a host that’ll give me a lot more!
Bear with me though, especially if you’re an edu, uni or learner blogs user… to compensate all you guys I’ll be adding 50% more storage to your file upload space!
And you’re not going to believe what just happened… have just been live in this learningtimes event, featuring Curtis Bonk, and Fang logged in… he said “Hi” I [privately] said “Hi” back and then added that I thought that the session was a bit ‘wishy’… which it was from where I was sitting… too much generalisable stuff with fairly generic stats and the whole ‘blended’ learning thing (in my book we’ve ALWAYS been blended learners so I don’t hold a lot of stock in the word).
Now I did this all privately… just to him… so when Prof. Bonk remarked “Oh, James thinks this is a bit wishy…” I was a little bit surprised… checked with an Elluminate user here and found that generally admin can see all the private messages…. WHAT THE F*#$ ???… ooooooo, I hate these admin driven systems, what a crap crap environment and there’s NOTHING there that tells you about this. Bastards.
Anyway, you should try to pop over and enjoy any one of the great list of speakers at this webheads conference “Bridges across cyberspace”, it’s running for the next few days. Just, um, be careful about what you say!!!
I agree that it was a bit wishy, and noted to the ed tech talkers that I have real problems with the term blended learning. It’s as if we (the learning field) thought that there was only one solution for learning (e-learning) and all of a sudden we discovered that you could use more than one strategy, ergo ‘blended”.
Interesting point about Elluminate; and to think that they just won an L&T award of excellence. My personal preference is Marratech (disclosure: sold by one of my business partners: mancomm.ca). There is also a free version (as in free beer), which I believe is good for one year: http://marratechfree.com/
Dear Dr. Wishy,
It is true that Elluminate software does not make it explicityl clear that moderators can view private conversations. I am not sure how you would make that clearly know, a big ole easterisk, or a ginat disclaimer upfront that perhaps no one would read.
However, I would not lay the blame so much on the software as to the peopleware– it was the sesssion leaders tragic mistake to share someone’s private comments with the world, much the same as it would be for anyone to shared the content of a whispered conversation on public television…. there are no automatic systems that prevent this, but “good” human behavior.
I’d imagine in a teaching situation, you may want to know what’s going on in the whispers. Or you could turn it around and activate moderator status on different students time to time to let them be peer moderators.
All you need to do is verbally let folks know up front.
In my experience, 90% of the Elluminate users never figure out or use the Private mode.
But don’t lay all the blame on the software.
PS- you should have told them that “wishy” was an Aussie term for “highly intelligent”!