Hi, welcome! My name is Robin Kay
And I'm going to introduce you to some of the features of Adobe Connect
Our virtual classroom software.
So as you can see this is a video and this is where your face would be displayed through a webcam and
this is the Note area and you can write any kinds of notes there.
I often use it to introduce a class and the learning goals, but
students also use these notepads in breakout groups, and we'll talk about that later.
This is the chat area and students often use that to
display comments to each other and
ask questions and
There's lots of social activity that goes through that and that also can be used in a breakout room
This is a very effective tool, so that everybody can participate
The other very useful tool is this status icon and if I click on it,
I can raise my hand I can agree with the point or disagree. I can step away if I have to do that and
these features are often used, but they can be fun in terms of
laughter/applause after a presentation. So if I have a question, I can raise hand and
when a student does that actually a little message pops up here and tells me who raised their hand
and then I can call on them to talk
You can also bring pictures into Adobe
connect which is really useful so for example here - this would be my
class overview the big picture of what I'm doing in my technology and curriculum class
and so I would go over that at the beginning
of each class just to see how we progress through the course.
I also use pictures, just for fun, at break when I offer virtual snacks we usually take a 15 to 20 minute
break during our class. I can't bring aim cookies, but that's the next best thing.
Of course I can bring in presentations, and so for example if you were to join our program I
would go through an orientation session, and I would click through there and
we would go through all the key features about our program.
Another interesting feature is the poll and here it is there and
So I can poll students, anonymously, for example in this case
I'm asking what generation they were born in and as they click
The answer is updated here, and I can broadcast those results.
And so everybody can sort of get a sense in our class most people were from the Net Generation
Some from Generation x and only a few from Baby Boomers, [and] then we can start a question about
generations and being part of them and what that means in terms of the use of technology
Another interesting feature is whiteboards.
So I can pull up a whiteboard
for example
And let me just spread that out a little bit and I can do a four Corners drill
You can do lots of things with the whiteboard
But I could ask whether students, in general, are for
using external rewards, little stickers or a
sounds or whatever when teaching students with technology?
So they could click on the marker and they could say yes.
And every student would click where they would like to and then we could have a little debate about
the pros and cons of using rewards and technology.
Another very useful feature is when I would like to share my screen
from my home and I can do that by clicking on, Pods, Share and
Add New Share. It comes up here the little Pod and
then I can say share my screen I
can also share
documents, and I can create a new whiteboard if I wish I won't share my screen right now
But you get the idea and that can be very
valuable if I want to demonstrate something or show something through a website.
And finally one of the most useful features is
the Breakout room and I'd go into a breakout room view by
clicking this little X and you can see there are various breakout rooms and I divided students and
then they can move to a breakout room say breakout room 2
Or let's see, you can move around
So on I'm in breakout room 1 right now, and then when everybody's moved to their breakout room
I can click on start break up rooms.
Now what that does is I'm in a different room. I'm not in the main meeting room right now. I'm in a breakout room
I can't hear what's going on in the other rooms.
But I can't work on a task. I can work on a chat, and chat with the people in this room.
It can make it much more intimate it can be three or four of us and we can make notes.
And we can do all the wonderful things. I've just shown you and then come back as a class to discuss it.
This is a very
useful technique in the class and students really enjoy it.
So that is a brief overview of what you would see, the kinds of things you would see, in a virtual classroom.