The other webinar (on inclusive education) used GoToWebinar, which I had to install when I went to log in, which took nearly 10 minutes so I was late and unfortunately it made my computer (with 8gb ram) very slow and I had to close all other programs. It was a much smaller group, so we all introduced ourselves. However it wasn't always easy to hear and as the group was international, it was sometimes hard to understand due to those two things combined and it took quite a chunk of time from the webinar to do this. 

There was no video and the moderator screencasted from her computer, which included sometimes dialogue boxes popping up on the screen and she had to move forward the main presenters powerpoint slides as he spoke, which wasn't the easiest thing as she didn't know when to do that. There was a box to submit text, but those messages only went to the moderator and not the other participants. The webinar was in the early evening on a Tuesday and lasted two hours, which worked quite well for me.

The OcTEL webinar used blackboard collaborate. You had to give a name when you joined, but there was no need for an invite or a login. There was a video of whichever presenter was talking in the top left, but it was quite small, I couldn't figure out how to make it bigger, which was a shame as I find it easier to listen to people if I can see their facial expressions. There were slides, which I think must have been uploaded to the collaborate software prior to the webinar, however the slides weren't massively useful for the format of this webinar, which involved some organisers/tutors of the course and 3 previous students talking about their experiences on OcTEL last year - I would have liked to have seen their blogs/tweets or other interesting things the did in the course.

There was a text box that everyone could write in and see what was said, but this was quite small and things scrolled fast very quickly. When people spoke they asked for smiley faces to show they could be heard, which is a great way of checking you can be heard, but it moved all the comments out of the way and I wish there was a separate smiley face or 'thumbs up I can hear you' button. I think the speakers/moderators had their own backchannel chat as well.

The webinar was at 1pm on a Wednesday, which was not really convenient as I assist in a class from 1pm until 3pm, so I went late just for this week, this week the webinar is at 12:30pm so I won't attend, but hopefully there will be one at a convenient time for me later in the course.

Obviously a large group online can't simulate a small seminar offline, so I don't expect a small classroom style feel, definitely in the large OcTEL webinars it would not be possible for everyone to introduce themselves, but actually I didn't find this made me feel very connected even in the smaller webinar. I felt more disconnected from others in both webinars than I do in even in a massive public lecture, because there I usually tweet and through that interact with others during the talk and at the end people ask questions and there are sometimes drinks and snacks or at least milling around time at the end and you get chatting to a couple of others about issues raised in the lecture. So for the moment, for me at least, these type of webinars are not a good substitution for in person talks.

Do you have comments or thoughts on this? Tweet me @TheRehn

Taking the Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector Course last year I did my 30 minute teach on discussions online and offline using Padlet (see atached), Answergarden and a couple of other services.

My coursemates really struggled with vocabulary/definitions, typing in a web address and feeling uncomfortable. Additionally we had multiple technological problems, for example padlet only loading on half the computers in the room, sound not playing on the ted talk video and people not being able to to comment in one place because they needed an account.

I felt like the session was taken over by technical difficulties, instead of what were trying to learn, less technology enhanced learning and more technology distracted learning.

I also find that I can get technology distraction a lot as well, so for this course I am choosing to use padlet as opposed to one of my blogs, so I can't distract myself with all the options and never finish a post! The cool thing with padlet is I can embed them over there after if I like, but it doesn't have to be perfect, with tags, photos etc.Comments? Thoughts? Tweet me @TheRehn