Virtual+Classroom



Description: The Wimba classroom is a real asset to online learning. It is one place that the students and teachers can come together all at the same time. Colleges and Universities have made this available to the instructors via BlackBoard ™. Wimba’s slogan is “people teaching people” and it couldn’t be truer. Our job was to archive a unit of study in our online classroom via the tool Wimba. My online class is Spreadsheets and Graphics Processing using the software Microsoft Excel 2007. The interactive use allows for immediate communication and teacher and student feedback. One of the biggest issues with online courses is the loss of student to instructor and student to student interface. The use of Wimba allows for immediate feedback and if the student has questions with the course it allows the teacher to help the student get back on track. It makes the online experience more instructive and informational. Process: We were to design and implement a Wimba Classroom for our online course. My online course was on the software program Excel. The first step was to practice using Wimba to get comfortable with using the program. I decided not to use Video Cam because from my experience it muddled up the screen so I just used my headset. I used the eBoard and inserted a picture. The picture had to be made in Excel and copied and pasted into the software program Paint. It was saved as a .jpg file. I knew I wanted to be able to write so eBoard allowed me to have a picture and be able to write in real time. I made many archives before I the final. I had to save it as a .mp4 file and upload it to my Screencast account. From there I had to embed the html so that a link could be created above. Reflection: I could see how beneficial Wimba was from our class. I liked the fact that we met weekly. I had never used it before but felt it brought the class together. I also liked having the archive available if we could not attend the session. This project would have been more fun had there been students. It took me a long time to decide on a topic for the class. I tried using a PowerPoint but it took too long. This project made me realize that time is an important criteria for deciding on the topic on an online Wimba class. There were many other things to consider. One thing I noticed right away was my inability to write on the eBoard. In the non-virtual classroom, I use the chalk with my hand. In the virtual classroom, you use a mouse on a computer screen. A mouse for me anyway is very difficult to handle. All in all, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be; of course, that being said without any student interaction. References: Paint. (n.d.). Microsoft. TechSmith Corp. (2010). Retrieved February 12, 2010, from Screencast: http://www.screencast.com/ Williamson, S. D., & Roe, L. (n.d.). //EDT 6020//. Retrieved February 10, 2010, from Wilmington University BlackBoard: http://wilmu.blackboard.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_303251_1%26url%3d Wimba. (n.d.). BlackBoard.