DeBrief of Pedagogical Event

Friday, May 8

It's over - Theresa and Janet's Pedagogical Event has been debrief and finalised. Thank goodness but what an experience. I didn't go to sleep at all on Thursday night but stayed up reading more and completing the PowerPoint and editing the wiki. Finally crawled into bed at 5 am and was up again at 8 am, back online. Later in the early evening, Theresa and I connected on Windows Messenger - we couldn't talk because her microphone wasn't working. I uploaded the PowerPoint file into Wimba and started practising with it and with the features of Wimba before she met me in the classroom around 8:45 am. We rehearsed for about an hour. The transcript will be amusing to listen to because I kept giving the mic over to her. The conversation just flows from Theresa and I enjoy listening to her accent. So we collaborated on who would say what and when, then we recessed so we could each get a cup of tea. At 10 am, Stacey Skyped me asking what Wimba room we were in and then she was in. We waited for Sheila but she didn't enter and so by 10:15 pm, we began the session, and I must admit - it went smoothly. I got nervous at one point and asked Theresa if she had any other comment on that slide, and she didn't. I was concerned about Task 3 since the survey indicted participants agreed we did a good job but did not strongly agree. Stacey suggested we didn't need the questions under each hat and should've let the conversation flow. Theresa suggested perhaps a synchronous event for Task 3 might have helped, but will have to listen to the transcript. In any event - the PPT ran well and it has been a huge learning curve for me. We decided we weren't all that pleased with Wimba. I couldn't run my webcam as it interfered with Theresa's reception and that's one of the advantages supposedly of Wimba. I don't like having to hold the Talk button down - we agreed conversation flows more naturally using Skype or WM. Now we're on to the papers.