The Uses of Video Conferencing

I feel that video conferencing can be useful, both among colleagues and in the classroom with students.

For teachers:

1) Allows for better productivity: Video conferencing allows for everyone to meet at the same time without having to travel (for example, to a PD opportunity). By minimizing travel time, more time is left over for productive activities that would not have been possible had travel been necessary.

2) Better interschool/interboard communication: Groups of teachers from around the city/board/province/country etc. can work as a team to share more ideas with one another. More ideas = better teaching opportunities.

For students:

1) Distance education is facilitated: Students are able to access lectures, study materials, and even talk one on one with instructors. This can be extremely useful for ILC and eLearning type courses, as instant feedback and information can be provided.

2) Sharing Information is easy: Most video conferencing software can be used to provide real time, relevant information, but also as a method of file sharing.

3) The classroom can be geographically limitless: Students can interact with other students, teacher, researches, professors, and locations all from the comfort of their computers. Gone are expensive field trips, as video conferences can learn at the click of a button.

4) Active participation is encouraged: In order to gain the most from a video conference, students need to do a certain amount of pre-learning. This will enable them to be better researchers, communicators, and thinkers. In all, they will become better interactors.

By minimizing the amount of time required to access resources, content, and people, video conferencing can be a benefit to the classroom – providing more time to actual use the resources, which is something where many teachers often find themselves lacking.