SevenSeasU, and my webinar debut
... written for Panbo by Ben Ellison and posted on Mar 30, 2011
I'm really not looking for more work in my life, but I failed to resist an invitation from Seven Seas U to at least dip a toe into their online education program. I'm impressed with what SSU has created, as well as a few recorded sessions on weather and SSB I reviewed, and I'm also intrigued with "webinar" technology (even if the name grates). While it's true that a few I've attended "live" have been marred by connection, sound, and/or screen problems, it does seem like an efficient way to teach a subject and have some back-and-forth with the class, and SSU seems to have the tech part down. So tomorrow night at 8pm EDT I debut a webinar on modern marine radars, and you're invited...
Well, invited to pay a registration fee, which opens me to accusations of flagrant self promotion. Guilty! I get a third of the proceeds, the worthy Seven Seas Cruising Association gets a third, and the final split goes to the team who run SSU and serve as stage managers during each webinar. But I have caveats. For one thing you can get the $10 SSCA discount just by using the code "Gizmo" in the registration process. For another, you can find most of the content free by searching around Panbo for the radar entries, particularly the radome comparisons I did in 2009. Theoretically, the presentation will be better organized, and will include a short section on radar basics, but then again it will also be the 1.0 edition and, if it works well, will be repeated, and better. How's that for a very soft sell?At any rate, I'm busy making PowerPoint files and designing my classroom on the Adobe Connect Pro service SSU uses, which I'm liking a lot. As you can see on admin screen below I have three layouts to fool with -- lobby, presentation, and Q&A -- and infinite "pods" like polls, download lists, etc. I can set up on each. I don't know where the SSU stage manager will be tommorrow night -- though if it's chief Tom Theisen, I think he's on his boat somewhere in the southern Bahamas -- but it doesn't matter because this whole deal is in the cloud. I'm a little excited actually, though I better get crackin. Tips on how to conduct successful webinars are welcome.
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I love 7SeasU and am glad you are participating. My biggest gripe about it is that you can't stream an archived presentation at a time of your choice. They run (and rerun) programs at 8 pm ET and, out here on the west coast, that's 5 pm PT. I am finishing up the work day at that time, and find it hard to find time to log in. I can't think it would be too hard to allow access to archived lessons at the time of the subscriber's choice.