A Wiki And Then Some

My adventure this week with web conferencing was an attempt at using the technology to work on a "project" with a team. I chose Central Desktop, because it seemed to provide a good way for team members to work together on the document/project planning piece in addition to providing a way to web conference.

Our "project" was "A Rockin' Fourth of July Celebration". The premise was for our team to look at the best places to celebrate, the best food to eat, and the best kind of entertainment to have a Rockin' 4th of July. With that as our goal, I got ready for the conference by setting up our group wiki on Central Desktop. We had a page that stated our goals, an RSS Feed that had a few 4th of July recipes (figured that was better than my - Throw The Burger And Dogs On The Grill - recipe). We also had a place for our documents and PowerPoints for easy collaboration. Not to mention, the tasks that needed to be accomplished. Kim rocked at the PowerPoint, and Keith was supposed to pick up the food - which I'm sure he did, but I didn't get to taste any of it. That goes on my list of negatives for distance learning - "Difficult to share food". Anyway, what this is getting at is that Central Desktop seemed to be like the wiki we've been using and then some. The great thing about setting up the web conference was that I had a chance to become even more familiar with wikis. I'm not sure that Central Desktop is the best web conferencing software, but I loved being able to web conference using our team wiki, and I think that something easy like GoTo Meeting could be used to work with a wiki that has been established independently.

With the free trial package, I was able to give four people access to the "team wiki", and those four people joined in on the conference. Thanks, to all of you for taking part. That certainly was a learning experience for me. Note to self - Make sure everyone is dialed in before moving forward with the conference. Sorry about that, team. In the end, I felt like it was a great experience, I learned more about the power of a wiki as a collaboration tool, and I can see how that, combined with a form of web conferencing, could be very useful. Going into this assignment, I was really focused on how this could be used to work with other trainers that are out in the field. Then, the more I worked with it, I think that the "wiki and then some", the 'some' being the web conferencing, could be very useful for distance learning students as they do collaborative projects. Each student could work on their own piece, and they could do all of the meeting and collaborating through the wiki. I think that it would be a great way for students to work on a semester long project that incorporates the learning throughout the semester. Another fun project would be for them to use it as a group portfolio that could be highlighted at the end of the course. I think that I had these ideas before, but it seems more feasible now that I've become more familiar with a wiki and then some.

P.S. Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. I'm still curious about what might have happened had we put out our "4th of July Survey". Just wondering if Beer Pong would have made the cut on the entertainment list. After all, if we can blog like college students, maybe we can still...