Fine tuning in Ping- a Virtual Classroom

 

Concentration in a virtual classroom

After the third session students are used to the routine, getting more comfortable with the software and the new environment for learning. They logged on a lot more quickly – all were on within 10 mins compared with  25 mins in the first session. Technical issues are getting less and students have worked out how to solve them independently.

Students actually worked the chat well. Feedback on what they are hearing is coming in naturally now.  They are now using the chat in elluminate to say they have problems cf with our first chaotic class when everyone seemed to be calling for help at once with their technical problems. This really is  becoming a virtual classroom.

The photos of the percussion instruments with  captions on the white board was good and added extra interest for the students.

They love lots of action, so photos and things happening on the whiteboard as well, work at engaging them fully. Ajax demonstrated great sound control from Melbourne when the percussion instruments were being demonstrated.

It seems to work well to have just one session on elluminate and the other with Joseph in our classroom and Ajax and the musician still on standby in elluminate. We are flat out in the classroom though, with 27 students.

The practical session

The students were efficient at putting their tracks together this time. Joseph placed the required outcome on the whiteboard and that worked well. Students knew what they had to.

Task Activity Instructions

• Project duration is 1 minute
• Their musical story must have 4 different tracks of music

cello

-saxaphone

-bass clarinet

-clarinet sounds

• Convert to mp3 file format
• Upload onto the blog post
• Write a brief description about the lesson, what you heard, learnt and what you tried to accomplish