Sunday, January 25, 2009

Report on Future of Education Qatar Event

I've delayed posting the audio recording of the first Future of Education "event" because, honestly, it was disappointing and I want a chance to sort it out. We were so close to a great event and yet...

First, we had a direct connection to the Skype call with Tom Friedman, but the microphone in Qatar was not muted during the call and it was often very hard to hear Mr. Friedman. I'm currently listening to the recording from www.edtechtalk.com (Dave Cormier was also on the call and recording) to see if it's better than mine. I'll post or link to the better of the two.

The video conference of the debate was, if possible, even more painful. Those of us live in Philadelphia were supposed to participate in the Q&A at the end, but the combination in Qatar of a presumably inexpensive webcam with trying to pick up sound from their large auditorium left us with no real alternative but to disengage from feed and just hold a local discussion in Philadelphia. Actually, it was the last 30 - 40 minutes when we were having that discussion in Philly that I found--and I think most will find--really engaging.

This was not the kick-off event that I had hoped for! However, the technical issues were somewhat out of our control, and you'll notice that the video and audio from our side were quite good and that Elluminate is a really good platform for this kind of thing. And on the really positive side, I've made several connections here at the Educon 2.1 conference that are going to make for GREAT upcoming interviews!

The link to the full Elluminate recording of both hours is https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2009-01-24.0601.M.40938F6939.... You can fast-forward in this recording or just to specific points. I'll post the audio-only when I figure out which is the best recording.

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