BYTE MARKS
Learning via Internet has benefits

By Burt Lum

For the first time, I was asked to participate using these tools in an online conference for educators. The event, held strictly online at tcc.kcc.hawaii.edu, was the ninth annual Teaching in the Community Colleges conference, whose theme this year was "Surfing the Broadband Wave: The Shape of Things to Come."

My link to the participants was through my high-speed connection. Voice was delivered over the Net and other multimedia elements. This was intermittent because of network performance, but overall the technology held up.

My presentation, called "Broadband's Impact on Building Digital Communities," consisted of a Power Point presentation, audio (via microphone), interactive chat and a Webcam.

The challenge in delivering an online presentation was getting a sense of who is out there. In a conventional conference session, you can see faces, readily gauge the interest level and literally feed off the group energy. In an online event, this is replaced with e-mail and chat feedback. That gives the presenter less of a sense of the audience. But for the audience, it provides a better way of interacting with the presenter: In face-to-face conferences, the audience is reluctant to ask questions. In the online scenario, humility is not an issue.

Another benefit for the participant is access to all the archived presentations. In a face-to-face conference, you might participate in only a third of the conference. But a conference delivered online can be stored online. Your ability to view all the sessions is limited only by your own time and energy. ;-)

Reach Burt Lum via www.roughtake.com.