Online classrooms & labs, was RE: Leading and Bleeding Edge?

["Sweet, Gregory (HEALTH)" <gregory -dot- sweet -at- health -dot- ny -dot- gov>]

Actually WebEx Training Center has had a virtual lab feature available for years. It's called Hands-on Lab and you can set it up for in-session or on-demand use. Technically, it was designed to allow students to remote access actual PCs in your training lab but in today's virtualized desktop world there is no reason you'd still need an actual room full of PCs.


Cheers!

Greg

 
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+gregory -dot- sweet=health -dot- ny -dot- gov -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+gregory -dot- sweet=health -dot- ny -dot- gov -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of Sean Brierley
Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2016 5:03 PM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Leading and Bleeding Edge?

So, I teach for a traditional B&M 4-year uni. I was in the classroom but got moved online. The thought about server-based virtual classrooms is a good one, and I would like to see it, but the approach is not that ... far sighted and is held back by ... state budgets and resources. That is, I struggle to get my students to use our Blackboard portal, such as it is (uuugh, difficult user experience there), and there are no, none, zippo, zilch online resources for tech support for students (other than videos), and vague, part-time-ish resources for teachers. An investment needed to raise the kind of strong infrastructure to really make online schooling sing and dance is ... a wee bit off on the horizon. :(

That said, taking classes like mine, online is definitely a good, strong step in the right direction. And while falling into it, or giving it a whirl, as it seems we have done, is perhaps not the best approach, it does have the advantage of getting the ball rolling.

Still, back to the topic, decentralizing the classroom like this means that seats of Flare are not available, as they would have been if I were still on campus teaching in the computer lab.

And, yes, creating documentation for YouTube is a particularly good approach for some products and projects. :D

Cheers,

Sean

On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 4:21 PM, Daniel Friedman <daniel -dot- friedman42 -at- gmail -dot- com
> wrote:

> On Sean's point, I hope that colleges will eventually catch up in the 
> virtualization of computer labs. For a while now, online course 
> providers (examples of free sites that do this include koding.com and 
> codecademy.com) have provided VMs for people to learn coding in a web 
> browser without installing custom or proprietary software. I would 
> think with the right licensing authoring tools could be accessed by 
> students enrolled in traditional online or in person courses over the cloud.
>
> The advantage is that the school could provide the computer labs 
> through a few servers rather than needing physical space and machines 
> for every student to use the labs. The downside is that there is less 
> chance for the students to collaborate or share ideas while learning 
> the software, but considering the online communities for these kinds 
> of tools, that might not be as big a deal these days.
>
> On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 4:03 PM, Sean Brierley < 
> sean -dot- brierley -at- gerbertechnology -dot- com> wrote:
>
>> Ahhh, but the leading edge of college education is now online. So, 
>> having the software in a college lab is nice, but doesn't cover the 
>> online contingent. ;)
>>
>>
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