Wow! WebHuddle was quite an experience for Team Highschool. I am very grateful that our group members are so flexible and patient. I usually use Adobe Connect (through MSU) or Skype for webinars, but decided to try WebHuddle as an experiment for this assignment as we need to stretch ourselves and technology use. I chose WebHuddle for a few reasons. First, nobody had any suggestions or preferences, second, it looked easy enough to use! I went in, created an account, and uploaded PowerPoint Slides with the project requirements for both Part A, Part B, and the final project. I invited everyone to the webinar (this past Tuesday, May 24, at 4:30 PM- we decided on this time with a Doodle Poll). I played around with changing user rights from moderator to participant, and tested my microphone. I went through the two tutorials, which really are simply demonstrations of recorded meetings and not much more. I figured we were all set and I got into the meeting at 4:25 to begin the meeting. That's when things began to go downhill.
The first person to appear was Shannon. We had some time to play with microphone settings while we waited for others. We mainly communicated using the chat feature until she could hear me speak. I tried giving her microphone rights and the buttons to do so simply didn't work. I felt awkward being the only speaker, and it was kind of strange to communicate verbally and in writing, but that is simply what we had to do at the moment. Scott Hudson come in second and we updated him on the situation via chat and I spoke. We decided to begin without Sami as about 10 minutes had passed, so we went through the PowerPoints with the assignments and began to brainstorm. As I was chatting and talking, my cellphone rang - it was Sami. The poor thing had logged into WebHuddle and could only see empty gray boxes where the chat feature and the PowerPoint should have been. She had been troubleshooting for the past 15 minutes or so and finally just called me. I didn't really have the tools to trouble shoot, and since everyone was connected at some point (me in the middle on the phone, microphone, and chat) we just decided to have me type in chat for Sami and read to her! What can I say, my group persevered! :-) We went through a few ideas in the Brainstorming session and finally settled on focusing on using Weebly to create a course website. Then, suddenly, Scott dropped off.
The next thing I knew, Scott was calling me on my cell phone. I didn't answer because I had Sami on the phone and was afraid the call would drop as it often does with my low-budget cell phone. Sami took notes for everyone, and posted them onto Google Docs and we made another date for a group meeting for us to check in on our progress. We plan to use the chat feature in Google Docs next time around. We ended the meeting and I called Scott back. His experience was similar to Sami's. He went from seeing the PowerPoints and Chat to just gray boxes. He tried entering the meeting over and over and it didn't work. I reassured him that everything was posted in Google Docs and we discussed the ending of the meeting. I found it interesting that two of four people had the exact same error occur. Fortunately, Scott was able to see and actively participate in the majority of the meeting.
After the meeting I went to the recording tab in my WebHuddle account and tried to download and view the recording. The only options they provide are to delete or download the file. I was able to download the file, but saw no place within WebHuddle to actually do a play back. I tried sending the zipped file to my classmates via gmail, Outlook, and through ANGEL. I also tried to post the file into the Team discussion board. In each instance I got an error saying the file was too large. I tried Storemedia but that didn't work either. The MSU helpdesk tried to help me out by going through the file extensions to see how I could open and share the link but they were at a loss as well and explained that they don't support WebHuddle. The WebHuddle help was not very helpful to me, but perhaps that is just me as a non-technical person. I feel awful that I have not been able to get a link to my classmates yet. Maybe the answer is so simple that it is right under my nose. I guess at this point it had been an hour and a half, I was feeling under the weather, was tired from troubleshooting, and balancing a microphone, chat, and telephone communication during the meeting. In short, WebHuddle was very frustrating!
I'm glad we tried something new, especially since I'd like to do some sort of video communication for my Wicked Project. I definitely will not use WebHuddle. I could virtually feel the door closing of my affective filter while the frustration of using this application grew. I can't imagine having students use this, whether they be college or high school. The experience reaffirmed my belief that one should always consider, and heavily weigh, the amount of support provided by either a school's tech support, helpdesk, or that of the application itself. If the technology doesn't work well, the learning is simply hindered. Students come away more frustrated than inspired.
At this point, the only advantage I can see for using WebHuddle is that it is free.
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