An Insider’s Look at APOP’s Virtual Colloquium – U.R. on Line
The autumn semester is coming to a close as the APOP team puts the finishing touches on its U.R.on Line E-conference. After more than a year of innovation, the volunteer APOP team, the IT partners and other institutional participants such as MELS and RISQ are wrapping up production.
More than 300 participants will attend on line on January 10th and 11th. Thanks to the magic of Internet, these people will be in their own comfortable surroundings, united by the electronic wizardry of optical communications.
Who could have imagined a few short years ago that people from every corner of Quebec and beyond would be sharing common experiences and discussing the integration of IT pedagogy into their classrooms without the hassles of travel?
As we embrace this technology, a utopian vision stretches before us where physical, geographic and economic barriers to the sharing of information and expertise fall by the wayside at a keystroke.
It would be unrealistic to assume that as we draw closer together, there will not be virtual bumps along the virtual road. Not only can attendees expect to hunt and peck their way to mastery of the platform, but they will have to weather intermittent communication fallout and bandwidth variability. As we pioneers strive to develop our own knowledge, improvement of the virtual environment will surely result.
To test what works and what doesn’t in this new world of mass intercommunication, we have established a network of more than one hundred workshops which will be “seen” or “seen again” using the archives feature.
In this electronic frontier, hesitations and clumsiness due to lack of experience are to be expected and should not deter anyone from contributing.
The dividends of our experience will be reinvested in pushing forward collaborative technology. We are looking forward to new means of telecommunication and perhaps a second web of on-line education. The colloquium is at the beginning of these exciting new developments.
We welcome the participants who are beginning this journey with us. We thank you in advance for your contribution to this visionary project.
Join us at our at the « 5@7 APOP » beginning at 5:30 PM on January 10. We have a surprise-filled evening in store to highlight APOP’s twenty-fifth anniversary.
We wish you all the happiest of holidays and welcome you to our upcoming virtual meeting!