What a Difference a Teacher Makes!

The night after my team played with Elluminate Live, our entire class met via this web-conferencing program for a session facilitated by our instructor. He led us through an organized, logical introductory session covering the major interactive features of this program and ending with an interesting website to explore (GapMinder).

This positive experience was the best antidote for the frustration I had experienced the evening before when we explored the same program on our own. Yet this session was truly facilitated, not dictated, since he invited us several times to play with the features and experiment for a few minutes with what they could/could not do. His style made this session feel like the instruction book for Elluminate that I had longed for during our team session.

I also liked the way that he left us at a web desitination....feeling a bit empowered by our experience and the instructor's orientation to this site, I explored it more than I would have if I'd simply been given the URL to check out.

Obviously, what I felt here was the power of scaffolding....offering the right amount of support to the students so they don't flounder, but they also still have some independence and choice within an instructional setting. The challenge would be figuring out how to offer various levels of scaffolding to each student or group of students. Obviously, we have a wide range of knowledge and skill in technologies like this. One person's scaffold could feel to another like a cage. I'm going to read some entries from my classmates to see how they felt about this session as well.