Today as a result of being in Vancouver and being physically absent from Friday’s Technology class I was able to “beam” in virtually. This meant I was essentially video conferencing in to a “move-able robot” type device that displayed my face, projected my audio, and allowed me to move about the classroom. This was a really cool educational tool. I was mainly at the front of the classroom as this was where the most space was and I could hear the teacher the best.
I did note some interesting things I found:
- I felt timid to move around the classroom, with fear of distracting other students/bumping into them/being in people’s way to see the screen.
- I also felt a bit timid to speak up when I had something I wanted to contribute to, to in class discussion.
- I also think having two screens would be beneficial, in order to follow along with in class demonstrations, while doing the work on another screen.
- The technology could be a bit more developed to see what is on the projector screen as well as cancelling out background noise to be able to hear better what the main speaker is saying.
We had Rich McCue, “hacker in chief” come in from the Digital Scholarship Commons on the 3rd floor of the UVic library. This commons is an amazing resource that offers free 1 hour courses on anything technology related from virtual reality, 3D design, video editing, etc. I will be taking advantage of this resource to sign up for some courses to learn about technology and get some ideas on what I want my free Inquiry Technology project to be about.
All in all, a really great experience! Thank you to my Proffessor for putting in the extra work to make this happen!
