Hi guys,

if you have 1 or 2 minutes you could do me a big favour and take the survey below. It is about the use of virtual classrooms and or Skype in online teaching. 10 questions only :).

http://surveys.polldaddy.com/s/770CBC3DB45DC817/

Thank you in advance, much appreciated!

Kirsten

I took the survey. :)

Thank you :) I will publish the results here on eduFire, of course.

I took the survey. Interesting. I do think that questions should be asked about how teachers incorporate their teaching into online platforms and how these platforms will change and/or affect teaching.

Done :)

Submitted

ur definition of screen-sharing is….? so that we have a clear understanding of terms….

just submitted :)

Thank you all :) Much appreciated.

@Alan This is a first survey where I just wanted to “get the feeling out there”. There seem to be some differences between Europe and North America, for example. So there will be some follow up surveys.

@Jamila Screen sharing is when you share what is on your screen with your student. So not uploading slides to a classroom. This would be whiteboard.

I took the survey…. yet I’d have liked to have room for comments…. as for what’s the most important: whiteboard, recording, screen sharing, etc…. for me, all of those are equally important but I could choose only one…. I would have liked to elaborate more….

Hi Lyne, as I said this is just to get a first impression. And I take your comment here in the forum to my notes.

Done.

I took the survey too.

In my opinion (as a language teacher) skype is much simpler to use than a virtual classroom, just because we only need to have a good and stable internet connection and a headset (a webcam is a plus, but not a must)

But I can admit that for other teaching subjects, a virtual classroom can be interesting.

As far as I am concerned, I must say I met too many technical issues with the classroom to be a fan.
The platform was originally designed to help teachers and students to meet in a professional environment, but with too many functionalities, the platform has become what we say in french " une usine à gaz …."
From Wordreference ;" Une usine à gaz is a setup, a device, a regulation so complex you can know from the start that it will not work satisfactorily "

Sometimes, it worked fine with me, but others, I had no solution than to use skype.

Don’t see any idea of “"” denigration “"” in my comment, just what I actually met when using the platform.

@Jean-Marie…. not all platforms are complicated (with unecessary functionalities)…. the one I use for training my students in my practice has many features, yet it’s user friendly and it’s what I do appreciate the most…. and I have to say that I never encountered technical problems…. and all of my students are really impressed with how smooth it is!

I took the survey. Virtual classroom is very essential for my lesson. Without the whiteboard, annotating, and slidesharing, I don’t think I could realized my Chinese characters online teaching. Now I have a WebEx classroom, where I and my students can do the classes comfortably, if their internet connection is fast enough.

Are there results for this survey yet? I see that this thread started at least two months ago.

I’ve never tried teaching over Skype yet. My main appreciation of EduFire is a) it’s a more easily trusted source for payment by students, b) Adobe Connect’s supporting of PowerPoint files. Other than that, I imagine Skype would do but, no one ever gave me a how-to guide for doing anything useful over Skype for teaching. I’m not sure how I’d go about it.

Certainly for two-way audio it seems the better option.