Elluminate Observations (for those wanting to read about my Wimba experience, it is posted below this one)

I've been quite busy this evening! I had my first online class using Wimba and then an hour later I had my first experience using Elluminate.  IVHS met on Elluminate for class this evening (the group I am F.I.T.-ing for).  Here are a few things I thought about/noticed during this session. 

1. Having a moderator AND a facilitator during a session seems to be very effective.   While the facilitator is speaking/lecturing the moderator can answer any questions the students are asking in the chat box.  This seems to save a lot of time.

2. Along with the above comment, when students ask a question in the chat box, another student can simply answer it instead of the facilitator having to stop and answer the question.  Again, this saves a lot of time. I'm sure it also makes the student feel good about themselves when they feel like they have helped out or contributed to the class in some way. 

3. It was interesting to see the students work on a problem together.  It took them awhile to start contributing/get organized, but in the end they came up with something together. It was just interesting observing the process of a group working together online.  

4. Jim (the facilitator) did a great job of getting the students back on track when they were starting to chat about random things in the chat box.  He simply told them that they needed to focus on the question at hand. This is something I didn't witness earlier this evening in my Wimba class (probably because the Wimba session was full of mature adults).

5.  I really liked how Jim asked the class to state one thing that they learned at the end of the class.  This is something I will definitely ask my students in the future.  

6. Finally, something else I noticed was when I said something to the class (at the end when class was over and everyone was just sticking around bantering back and forth) I noticed that the conversation kind of stopped for a bit.  It was as if the students were like "Who is this and why is she talking?"  However, I could be totally wrong about what their silence really meant. 

Overall, it was all very interesting.