Conference Calling

Yikes! I learned today not to make the assumption that the only thing needed for a conference call was a webcam. Wrong!! I got the webcam but still had trouble on 4 different conference calling sites. First we tried AOL's Aim, then Yahoo's Messenger, then tokbox.com (with a different person even) and finally skype. All I can say is UFF DA! None of them seemed to work. Whether it was my webcam (a logitech), my computer's capabilities, my internet connection (Charter high speed internet) and its ability to live stream video/audio or something else, it was a frustrating struggle. I couldn't see my friend as clearly as I'd like in many of the programs and she couldn't always hear me. Seemed to go into chopped off sentences or worse yet, what Michael (CLC Dean of Tech) experienced as well-nasty static.

So, I learned not to assume it would be easy for me. Therefore, I can't assume it will go smoothly for my students either. I had hoped to do conference calling for office hours if students wanted it, but if my laptop isn't able to process live streaming I'm not sure what there is to do. I'm checking with Michael tomorrow so maybe it will all be OK.

But I didn't want today to be totally unsuccessful, so I completed my first quiz for my Mass Communication class based on the video I created on "A Local Glimpse of Political History" on the '08 Presidentially Election. So yeah!! I also found some cool links and resources which I added to the D2L site. So now I can rest a little easier tonight. And hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to communicate easier as well.