Week 1 Recording of BonkOpen viewed - interesting


One of the things that participants need to do in #bonkOpen in order to receive a badge for being part in this MOOC, was to attend (or view the recording of) each weekly live session. I've said it before, and I will say it again: I am not a fan of synchronous conferences; I just don't like sitting there for an hour...or two...or three...listening to people do their thing.  I prefer my visual channel to be better engaged when listening to mostly audio information, and most synchronous conferences are just powerpoint, powerpoint, powerpoint...yawnnnn.  At least in class (face to face) you have body language, movement, people coming and going, neighbors and so on.

In any case,  with the help of a piece of software called Elluminate Publish (thank you Blackboard person on Twitter!) I was able to download the recording in video format (just a bit over 130MB if I recall correctly) for the entirety of the two hours.  It was a nice presentation, nothing good, nothing bad - just nice. It added a little more dimension to the TEC-VARIETY model readings we had in the MOOC.  I saw some people on the discussion boards complaining that Curtis Bonk tried too hard at being entertaining, making a fool of himself (really paraphrasing here) with all those cow sounds when he talked about Moooooodle and MooooooCs.

OK, I honestly didn't mind, I thought it was funny.  A two hour webcast would be boring if it were a straight lecture.  You need to break these things up. Also, the fact that Curtis Bonk looks like Zaphod Beeblebrox (see photo; from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) sort of helped solidify the somewhat whacky persona.  The session was a bit long, but with so many people attending, it would make sense that there is a 45-60 minute "lecture" and a discussion around Q&As from the participants, so not such a big deal.

Elluminate publisher offered me an MP3 audio-only version of the session. I am wondering if next time I should just go with the audio, since the video didn't offer me much more than the audio would.

Your thoughts?

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