A crowd of approx. 82 participants of the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course, commonly known as CCK08, just met in a synchronous online session in Elluminate. It was quite an experience for me as that was my first live session in Elluminate. Previously, I was only able to watch recorded sessions of webinars.

Participating in this hour long discussion was challenging as I had to listen to the various speakers and watch the rapidly flowing chat. This time, the whiteboard could still be mostly looked at peripherally. Had the session been at the previously set time (2 a.m. in the morning for me), I would not have been able to follow for most of the time, I guess, as I am not a night owl. 😉

I think I would have coped a little bit better even now if the chat window had been bigger. This little window was way too small for me to see the comments properly. I’m not talking about the size of the font, but rather the comments themselves. At times they just sped past and were gone beyond the scrollbar. Maybe I can increase the window size. I haven’t figured that one out yet. However, I still have 11 more weeks to go to either find a way to enlarge the text chat area or to get used to reading the comments in the small window without losing track of the speaker. 🙂

This shows that I am not so good at multi-tasking. George Siemens, who moderated the session by himself for a few minutes before Stephen Downes joined, and was already there before the session, did a wonderful job of talking and reading the comments at the same time and getting back to them.

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