2nd Webconference

Sunday, 14th December, was the date set for our 2nd webconference.

Like before we used a simple Google Doc to allow everyone to share their availability. Eleven in the morning in Portugal, midday in France and Germany and one o'clock in Estonia, Ukraine and Turkey again seemed to be the best time to meet.  Alas, prior personal and professional engagements meant that only 3 of us (Portugal, Germany and Turkey) were free to attend the webconference. Still, we decided to go ahead and then just share with the others what we had discussed. So at the set time the 3 of us sat in front of our computers and logged in to Skype to get the webconference under way.

It was great to speak to Sezi and Oğuzcan again, and after the mandatory :) "His and Hellos" we talked for a good 40 minutes. We shared what we each had already done regarding the project's activities and what hasn't been working. In one way or another we have all had delays due to tech problems and time management issues since, even though we did try to spread out the activities so as to only have one a month, the different time frames of school breaks and the different amount of times we have classes with our students makes it a bit hard for all of us to keep to the set activity schedule. That's something we'll need to look into so as to make the necessary adjustments.

We also went into the idea of having a shared online space where we could all keep copies of our students' work. That way we could all access each others' work and download it if need be, so as to get around internet connection issues when showing it to our own students. We will use Google Drive since unlike our Twinspace it doesn't require sign in, so we can easily share it with anyone. It also makes it easier for all of us to quickly access everything and upload or download any type of file, as well as organize things in anyway we want. The idea is to later simplify the selection of the work we want to include in the final task by keeping everything in one place and in a readily usable type of file.

We'll see how it goes. ;)

1st webconference

Sunday, 12th October, we got together for our 1st all partner webconference.

Eleven in the morning in Portugal, midday in France and Germany and one o'clock in Estonia, Ukraine and Turkey. Time zone differences, personal and professional engagements don't make it easy to set up something like this, even when there are just 7 of us. But I guess it just goes to prove that when there's a will, there will always be a way. :)

We had our heart set on using Google Hangouts for the conference, but technology had something else in mind - for some reason, two of us had no audio or mic capabilities. It just shows that you always need some sort of a backup plan. So after a few "log out and log in" suggestions, mixed with "have you tried this and that..." we decided to use Skype. No video, but at least that way we could all hear and speak.

While skyping we opened up a google doc and started making notes. It felt just like we were in the same room and not miles and miles away. We sat there and talked for about an hour, went into different aspects of our project, had a few laughs and then said our "goodbyes, and talk to you later". Really, you got love technology! :) 

Our Hangouts trouble documented :)