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Articles Conference Reviews |
2009B7LaceySession B7: Classroom 2.0: Teaching, Learning, and Theorizing Adobe Breeze Justin Hodgson, Clemson University Jason Helms, Clemson University Amanda Booher, Clemson University All of us know that the first years of graduate school are overwhelming, time consuming and stressful. However, to combat the stresses of seminar discussions and endless reading lists, Hodgson, Helms, and Booher all experimented with Adobe Breeze to supplement and maximize their in-class time, as students and instructors. Adobe Breeze (now called Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro) is a program which allows users to chat in various “pods” (small screens contained within the larger frame of the program), share Powerpoint presentations, conduct polls, and display notes and meeting goals among various other tasks all on the same screen shot. In other words, users will save time because Adobe Connect eliminates the need to shift between screens, allowing users to focus on the meeting and the subsequent chat conversations instead. Before the panel began their presentation, each attendee was prompted to login and create a screen name in order to participate in the session. This participation was ultimately what made this panel so memorable—rather than watching a demonstration of Adobe Connect, we were the demonstration. Some small talk chatting began in the first pod, mainly introductions among attendees and polling on Amanda’s Shoes, the first poll initiated by the presenters. What followed was very appealing—while Hodgson, Helms, and Booher were presenting, most everyone in the audience participated in the chat pods by asking and answering questions, posting links to supplement the topics that the presenters were discussing, and joking around with people we had just met. In fact, by the end of the session we had three chat pods to which most everyone was posting rapidly. Interestingly, none of this extra activity seemed to distract from the presentation that was occurring simultaneously, but rather integrated each individual differently. It was not necessary to contribute to the pod chatting – one could simply read the conversations and listen to the presenters. Because the attendees were using the chat functions to talk about the presentation as it was happening, Hodgson, Helms, and Booher noted that using Adobe Connect in their graduate seminars proved helpful in exactly the same way that we were using it in their presentation. However, Hodgson, Helms, and Booher all noted that Adobe Connect is not always idyllic, and there are some heavy ethical issues that are attached. For example, as students, since each user must be invited to participate, Hodgson, Helms, and Booher explained that with each new entering class of graduate students, they had to invite them to participate in their Adobe Connect meeting space. When using Adobe Connect as instructors, Hodgson, Helms, and Booher recognized that some students might feel marginalized if they cannot type quickly or keep track of the chats, causing them to feel left out of the conversation. Even though the presenters acknowledged that sometimes they have to remind students that profane and offensive language and conversation should be avoided in these spaces, Adobe Connect often allows quieter students to speak more freely in a chat setting. Even more fascinating were some of the statistics that Hodgson, Helms, and Booher revealed: in a normal class, the chats generated more than twenty-five pages of text per meeting. In a writing classroom, using these tools not only shows that students are indeed writers, but also that are writing much more than imagined. Overall, this session was certainly entertaining, highly informative, and engaging. To explore the session’s Adobe Connect experience, the presenters have made the link available: https://connect.clemson.edu/p41139983/ |