One long hour of trouble shooting. Does Skype kick everyone off a conference call---is there a rhyme or reason?
I guess it wasn't my day for 'Skyping!' This webcast was for a doctoral class at Illinois State University that I am taking on Improvements of Curriculum and Instruction. I was partnered with Dea Conrad-Curry to lead our class discussion for this particular session. We created a wiki for students to post and respond to questions the week prior to our online webcast. We, as a class, were to read 3 chapters: First was Chapter 6: Understanding by Design: Crafting Understandings by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. This chapter focused on defining the outcome of getting the learners to truly understand, and not just regurgitate information. Next Book was The Curriculum: Problems, Politics, and Possibilities. We read chapter 9: The Culture and Commerce of the Textbook by Michael W. Apple. Chapter 10: Democracy and the Curriculum by George H. Wood. Both of these chapters focused on the politics of curriculum and thus text book selection.
The webcast itself was an hour of trouble shooting to say the least. My co-host used internet connect at a hotel, we had a guest speaker who tried to download skype 10 minutes before show time, and my co-host could not get into the chat room. To attempt to minimize stress, the guest speaker shared my co-host’s laptop….this lead to only one set of earpiece speakers and ‘passing’ of the mic/speakers- not an ideal situation, but they handled it relatively smoothly and minimized it to only necessary changes. Also, Skype- well, I am going to blame Skype- disconnected our conference call three times during the hour show. However, I never lost the streaming- so it could have been worse. I kept everything flowing by quickly calling those in the conference call and got right back into the conversation.
Another positive was that I actually was streaming in BOTH Sandbox A and B. Previously, I had troubles getting one or the other to work. The chat room during the show was flowing a lot- which was great. However, I know that I make a LOT of noise when I type during the show, so I minimized my chatting. I think someone mentioned before there is a ‘rubber keyboard’ or something that I could get to reduce the noise. I guess I need to add this to my Christmas list!
My final issue that I have learned is my bitrate in Audacity needs to be changed PRIOR to recording. My file size is relatively large, however, I was unable to change the bitrate now that it is recorded and saved. I know where to do this in audacity- edit/preferences/file format. I will remember this next time!
-Julie Schumacher Class 2.2