For our group's brainstorming session we reviewed several web conferencing tools. After everyone had a chance to look though a few options, we thought Yugma looked like a great web conferencing tool. Unfortunately, we were not all able to access the conference room due to programs needing to be updated. There also seemed to be an issue with using Safari as well. We decided to try out Vyew for our group activity. Everyone was able to easily access the room and share their screens. Unfortunately, we were not able to figure out the talking option. We were hearing a lot of echoing due to us not having headsets or our built-in mics were creating the echoes. However, we found a way to work around that. We took turns talking and let each other know by raising our hand if we had a question. To record our session, we used Camtasia.
The advantages of using a web conferencing tool like Vyew is that everyone was able to collaborate together at the same time. I really liked how easy it was to share documents and screens. We could also see in "real time" the changes that were being discussed and made to our Google Doc. We were able to make comments by each section, so we could remember what was said and decided.
The disadvantages of using Vyew for our conferencing tool unfortunately out weighed the advantages. It was not an ideal situation for collaboration because of the audio difficulties. When I work in a group, I like to hear everyone's ideas. You get a better sense of who you are working with and their goals. I also tend to forget my ideas or hold them back when I have to wait. In our future meetings, I believe we will be using Skype to communicate our ideas, but will probably use Vyew if we want to share something that we have been working on.
You can view our recorded session here
Here is a link to our Brainstorming Session
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