Florida Virtual Schools Uses Elluminate Software
November 23, 2011
Screenshot of Elluminate Live
More and more school districts are coming up with unique ways to bring learning to the Web. Florida Virtual Schools, the website where any Florida student can take classes online, tries to make the online classroom more social and they do that with Elluminate. Elluminate Live is a software that allows the teacher or administrator give interactive slideshows and quizzes to the group of people attending. Students can activate a web camera, microphone, or use the chat box to talk with teachers and other students. Many classes require you to complete at least one “collaboration assignment” with Elluminate.
I think that using online conferencing tools for the online classroom is a wonderful idea, but it’s poorly executed. Taking classes that require collaboration myself, it gets annoying to wait for people’s technical difficulties, everyone to calm down, and for people to behave. Just because it’s not the physical classroom doesn’t mean that no rules apply! Many students draw on the PowerPoint slides, put emoticons in the chat boxes, and use “texting abbreviations.” Online conferencing can be a good thing, but in the hands of teenagers, it can cause more problems that it fixes.
