Using elluminate in the 21st century classroom

[Anne Mirtschin]

Over the past 18 months I have used elluminate to attend professional development sessions in the USA. I live in a small town in country Victoria, Australia where cost and distance prevent me from attending many professional development activities. Elluminate has allowed me to attend online meetings with other global staff for the flatclassroom projects, including the netgened and digiteen projects. Elluminate is a great virtual classroom or meeting room tool. It allows chat (everyone is comfortable with chat), audio (not everyone is comfortable with this one), video, polling, use of emoticons and breakout rooms. A whiteboard allows presentations to be uploaded, images to be shared and a toolbar for writing and interacting on the whiteboard. Applications can be shared and web tours made. Its power to allow interactivity is one of its best features for 21st century education.
The first elluminate classroom use was for the Ping pilot project with members of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. (MSO) The MSO would play their instrument and talk about the physics of it. Once through the sound problems and other technical issues, students loved to interact online. They would give feedback to the musicians via chat and emoticons, could ask questions and receive responses from the musicians. Students soon became virtual. The video linkup provided us with a clear image of the musician.
Student summits conclude the flatclassroom projects where students discuss their learning outcomes and personal achievements. However for the last student summit, I ran out of class time. So, my girls were happy to meet at night time with the students from Qatar Academy as they held their summit.
It was intriguing to watch the chat go ‘wild’! Students from two corners of the world, were finally in the same classroom at the same time. They supported each other with positive comments whist presenting, asked questions of each other and learnt about their different countries and cultures. At one stage, the chatroom was comparing favourite foods, and Julie Lindsay seized the moment as ‘teachable’ and ran several polls.
In summary, I find elluminate a fabulous, engaging tool. I am convinced that tools such as this, are the future 21st century classroom and have the power to change classrooms right around. Elluminate allows teachers and students to “get outside their comfort zones”. They no longer have to worry about speaking up in front of the class as text chat is non threatening. Students can get their opinion out (quite readily telling the teacher or instructor when they don’t understand) and even the shyest of students will participate.
Cross posted

[Julie Lindsay]

Great post Anne! I agree, being able to work within a virtual classroom such as Elluminate is an essential requirement for 21st century learning. Taking advantage of a real-time connection and promoting best-practice presentation and interaction skills with others is a great way to foster 21st century skills. Thanks Anne!