U-Blog 6

We presented our workshop on "Instant Messaging and Chatting Online" at the Lowman Home Community. I feel like our presentation went really well today. Our presentation was well prepared and executed as we had planned.

With each person needing to create an individualized account, we felt it was best to work one-on-one with the participants. They responded to this teaching method very well. While the participants had written instructions in front of them, they followed better when we could explain the exact step they were working on. The participants proceeded at different paces as some had email addresses they could use as their screen name and others needed to create a screen name from scratch as their email address was already in use as a screen name. With a small group, we were able to integrate some of the training tools discussed in Learning at Work (Chapter 7). For small groups they said that games were an effective teaching tool. We used a game as our group activity. Writing down all the participants screen names, we switched them and had the participants IM to find out who they were talking to. I feel they not only enjoyed this game, but also learned something. Soon, they were asking their neighbors to switch their papers so they could add another new "buddy" to their "buddy list".

I am glad we did this project, I feel like both sides gained a lot.