First Elluminate Session

Monday was my first session teaching with the Elluminate eLearning software. I was well prepared for the session with a good concise set of slides introducing the course, my Scan Focus Act approach, Shared Language, and Social Bookmarking, but discovered last minute that my slides were too large to be uploaded to Macintosh version of Elluminate. Ended up showing them in screen sharing mode, which doesn't work great with multiple monitors and Mac OS X's Spaces functionality. However, it seemed to work out OK. Next time I'll try exporting to PowerPoint and have Amy upload it using the PC version of Elluminate.

I've been in quite a few Same-Time Different-Space collaborative environments, but I found Elluminate somewhat sterile. Although most all the students were there there it still felt like I was reading my presentation to a blank screen rather then speaking to an audience. I think it is the lack of continuous audio (you have to "press a button" to speak). I think it made my talk a little stilted, but we'll see. I also need to figure out how to get the students more actively involved — there is a chat backchannel, but it wasn't used extensively.

As I want this course to be open course, another challenge is going to be exporting the Elluminate session as some type of video. There is replay functionality, but it requires Elluminate and a BGI account. I think I may be able to screen record the replay to get the class into a video that I can publish.