My group is finishing up our preparations for the workshop as I speak and the thing that struck me the most about getting ready is just how little time we actually have. Joanna, Brett and I figured that what with activities, introductions, evaluations, etc. we'd only have about five minutes of pure info-dump time at our disposal. Believe me, we intend to make that time count. I even made a useless little PowerPoint to give our participants something fun to stare at as I motormouth.
I have to admit, reading the Mosley article a week late was actually kind of beneficial for me (plus, her first name is actually Pixey, which just about made my week). It helped me put things into perspective as we threw together all the last-minute touches on our workshop. Don't get the idea from all this talk of night-before planning that we procrastinated on this assignment. No, we met last Wednesday and last Saturday. I would just like to reiterate: I got up on a Saturday for 643. Our workshop is going to kick butt.
As for last week's class, I'm still in the "ooh, shiny new technology" phase as far as elluminate is concerned. It was really useful to get a feel for what our webinars will look like on the other side when the time comes. I also took a peek at a couple other classmates' blogs before writing this, and I think I agree with most of what they said about the experience; namely, that the conversation got a little chaotic and we might have gotten more out of it if we could have used all of elluminate's features. It was pretty weird for her to be able to see but not hear us and for us to be able to hear but not see her. On the other hand, we got to talk to a real-life library blogger who was knowledgeable and articulate and totally didn't treat us like children. You know you've grown up when the grown ups take you seriously.
Hi - We'll be talking more about webinars as time goes on. Keep in mind that there were two conscious choices made by the presenter: not to use a visual (like slides) and to not have a video feed. Those are both options you have.
ReplyDeleteAlissa and I also had that moment when we realized how little time we had to actually get in the information. It just makes me realize exactly how important planning is for a workshop. I'm so glad that Kristin had us write out how long we thought each activity would take. That really helped us with time management!
ReplyDeleteI think I am going to have to pay attention to authors names in the future. Usually I just read the article and don't worry about the rest (shameful, I know), but Pixey has me converted.
ReplyDelete