Lamar - Web Conference

One of the assignments in my graduate course this week was to participate in a web conference. This is a great idea for technology education leadership students as we need to have some experience in how these web conferences work. We have had these conferences in our previous courses as well, but this week was an example in what not to do. We use Adobe Acrobat Connect to access these web conferences and normally ask questions to clarify our assignments, and learn of any upcoming events that will affect our program of studies. This week was not a successful web conference because the software appeared to be overloaded. First the few people with video on froze and then the entire video portion was lost and we resorted to just a typed chat conference.
Normally I participate in these conferences using my Macbook computer. I can normally speak, but have yet to learn why my working internal camera can not be turned on for the web conference. In some conferences there has been a button for me to allow access and in others there has not, but it has yet to actually show a picture.
This week's conference was not very successful probably because there were too many people trying to get online at the same time to ask their questions. It appears that after about 20 people the system slows down to a crawl or freezes entirely. The one good aspect is the chat. In the Adobe program, there is a chat to accompany the video. The chat allows us to comment to the entire group or privately to any of the participants. During the conference this week my partner and I were able to chat privately about our collaboration on an assignment and identify two others we would like to invite to participate in our group for our upcoming project.
While we were making those arrangements we were also able to have our questions answered by the professor and follow the questions of other students.
As we participate in more and more web conferences, I feel that each of us is becoming more relaxed using the conferencing program. We have learned some basics such as keeping our mics turned off when not speaking, ensuring adequate lighting for our cameras, and how to follow both the video and chat portions of the conferences.
I am not quite sure how I will use this process as a teacher, but I certainly see how useful it is to know how these conferences work. As the business world moves more and more into online conferencing to save on costs, it will become imperative for our students to understand the process in order to compete in the job market.