Comments on: Do we really agree? Let’s See.

By: Christine Martell

Christine Martell — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 05:12:54 +0000

Oooo, interactive whiteboard online, always wanted to try that. Thanks for the suggestion Claire.

As Michele has noted, we do need to have another conversation, so we’ll have to play with the whiteboards. This whole topic is so fascinating to me. Just how are we going to depict just what we are trying to do in this new media? Or does it matter? Maybe we just have to work on the pitch to get people to jump in and play?

By: Claire Thompson

Claire Thompson — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 04:52:22 +0000

Christine, it's quite striking how different your spirals are! I read Michele's post first and I wasn't sure that I agreed with the implied hierarchy. Your spiral, because it is flat suggests more interaction between the different levels. Clearly visuals are an important part of communication. That's what I really like about the program Elluminate Live!; not only can you communicate with text, audio, and video -- there is also an interactive white board. When I tutor my math students on-line the whiteboard is just wonderful to use to quickly write up equations and sketches. Being able to share a whiteboard on-line is amazing! Elluminate is not free (although in BC, Canada the ministry of education has a province wide license whereby all public school teachers can set up their own Elluminate 'room' that is available to them 24/7) but I see that the Elluminate people have a free version -- vRoom -- where up to 3 people can collaborate using the whiteboard etc. WizIQ also has a whiteboard; it sounds like it is a combination of Elluminate Live! and YouTube. I haven't tried vRoom or WizIQ, but it sounds like they would add the visual component that may often help move our communication along. Thanks for an enjoyable post!

By: Michele Martin

Michele Martin — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 11:24:14 +0000

Hmmm. . . . looks like we need another conversation on this. Yours is of course more of a spiral, but I also feel like it’s harder for me to understand that way. As AJ pointed out to me, what I really drew was a helix, but in some ways I think I still wanted to capture a sense of a hierarchy. Someone mentioned that they’d started blogging before they did the lower levels because they wanted to write about a vacation, but I wonder if that really captures the essence of blogging if the "lower" levels haven’t been integrated as we talked about?

I agree completely with you that the visual expands the conversation and shows us where we’re having a different vision of how this stuff ties together. You’re also making an excellent point about how the visual can help us tease out the differences in how we’re using language, too.