Due to a Government lockdown, the university centre is currently closed, and therefore we have been given the task of studing online learning options for our group. This session started with myself and my peers logging into ‘Moodle’ which is the University’s ‘Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment’. From here we were advised by our tutor to open the lets talk forum and say hello so Mark knew we were there. This proved extremely stressful as the Moodle forum is not an instant messaging tool and therefore, we had to keep refreshing the browser while we waited for all of our peers to add their comment. The first task for this session was to find other learning platforms which could be used to enhance our learning while not in university. The group came up with a few ideas, including; Skype, WhatsApp, Zoom and Microsoft Hangouts. We were then asked to consider how these are accessed and if these would be safe or accessible for a primary school aged child. While this was a good question to consider, it caused a lot of confusion within the group as we were under the impression that we were researching them for our own learning benefit.
After an hour and a half of the session starting, we had managed to say hello to the group and find an alternative way of learning through online technology. We decided to try out the ‘Zoom’ conferencing system first. I set up the meeting link and invited both Mark and my peers to the video conference. I felt immediate relief when I was able to see and hear my peers and tutor, receiving instant replies. While it was also difficult caring for four children and I did have to mute my microphone at times because of this, it definitely worked a lot more effectively than the moodle forum.
We also attempted to use Google Hangouts, however, after a few minutes we noticed that there were some issues. Firstly, now all of my peers had access to a G-Mail account which was needed to access a google hangout meeting. Secondly, there were only a small number of people who were able to access the video conference. Once too many people were on the video, the rest of the students were given an error message. Because of this we went back to using the ‘Zoom’ software.
We found that the zoom software had some benefits such as file sharing and an instant chat option which worked well. Because of this we have decided to use this platform for next weeks session.
Rebecca.
Rebecca's Educational Blog 