Reflection on Group Project2

Just like Group Project One, our group had finished the second project successfully on this Wednesday night. There’s a minor imperfection, which is the pity that our group did not get to meet together. Charity was right, we should have informed our group members earlier so five of us could meet together, and this could be definitely improved in our next Group Project, which was planned on Sunday evening.

This time we get to experienced both audio and video function of telecommunication. We used Voice Board as well as Wimba to communicate with each other around the topic of how these functions could be used in our classroom. Besides a little time waiting for Wimba to set up and a little experience of bumping into each other’s voice when we talk, everything else went along very well. I enjoyed discussing with group members on the topic, which made me felt I was really in a class. This is something I never felt before during last semester when I had online classes. We tested different functions like talk, video, hand-raising and so on. “Live classroom was really alive”. We exchanged out ideas and comment on each other’s ideas. As to the possible use of such technology in our classrooms or would-be classroom, we came up with these ideas individually:

Roslyn: online classes can be lonely without the synchronous part. This would allow more connection to the class. It helps solve the problem of distance – we can still meet as a class without traveling to campus.

Rongfei: Wimba is good practice for hearing and listening to another language. Communicating with students in other countries, learning each others' languages is more effective than just listening to tapes in that language. According to the Communicative Learning Theory (CLT) in language teaching pedagogy, communicative situations make language learners to respond the incoming information and so the received information could be verified and confirmed, it is a good way to test whether the learner had understand the informing information. After responding, language learners will get subsequent information confirming their responding, so it's also good practice for their speaking skills. It is much better using Wimba than using tapes to practice students' listening skills because they could not communicative.

Tim: the voice board could be used to “turn in” recitations in a foreign language class or speeches in a public speaking class. Roslyn noted that Wimba could be used for small-group and one-on-one interviews, for assessment purposes in a business setting (could work for academics as well). Wimba could also be used, as Dr. Wang did, for a classroom chat with an outside expert (either in a face to face class in a computer lab, or in an online class, where everyone's together virtually).

Charity and Elois: there were several difficulties using Live Classroom and voice Board but agreed that it would not be suitable in a K12 classroom environment. Because some student may not have access to the equipment that is needed in order to participate in the online classroom activates (cameras, microphones, and computers). Also everyone has to be at their systems at the same time and some may not be available or able to access at the same time.

Artifact: Project 2 Report