Hi everyone, Amber here,

As you may or may not know I have just recently joined the exciting Elluminate team as the Online Marketing Associate. Before I begin blogging about my experiences, I thought you may want to know a little more about me. I recently graduated from Endicott College in Beverly, MA, where I received a B.S. in Communications. During my four years with the school, I completed several full-time internships with some local TV stations. Yes, I did see my 15 minutes of fame, but it is fading just about as quickly as it came.

I have an interest in blogging and podcasting and thought it would be cool to blog about my experiences at my new job, especially about learning to use a new technology. I look forward to blogging with all of you!

Just in case you didn’t already know, Elluminate has its very own podcast feed! Here are a few different links you might want to check out:

Well, it’s August 1st. What better time to start a blog then at the beginning of a new month? I also picked today because I had my very first “Ah-Ha” moment here at Elluminate. Let me tell you about it.

To learn as much as I can about Elluminate’s web conferencing products, I have been participating in the live training sessions (free to everyone, by the way) available on Elluminate’s website. As I say, sometimes it’s best to learn by doing. I liken this experience with playing a new board game. Who really reads those pesky directions anyway? Sometimes you just have to wing it and jump right in. I really found this form of training accommodating, and not just for me. I can see how future educators should really learn about this format. How could you possibly expect your students to become familiar with it if you don’t really understand it yourself?

Ok, so back to my “Ah-Ha” moment. I was nearing the end of my training session (Part III for Moderators), when our online teacher Amanda brought us to a new screen and showed us how to add multimedia content. Super cool! I thought this could be a fun tool for my own use, but then it got me thinking.

With the recent buzz about self-created videos, the moderator could easily focus attention in a real-time session by showing a short video and guiding discussion about it. This could be accomplished by simply adding in a relevant video from a popular social video site. Or, even better, students could create their own Free vRoom session and publish it next to their own video on one of these sites. Then the students could join this vRoom at a specified time and discuss the video in real time! One of Elluminate’s key words is engage. And what better way to enagage than allowing students a new vehicle to discuss their own creations.

Well, just an idea. Anyhow, I’m out. Until next time bloggers….keep on bloggin’.

Amber