Online Meeting Toolbox

The Education departments on the Fredericksburg and Stafford campus of UMW are in the initial stages of planning for a College of Education. This planning will involve a large number of meetings, bringing together approximately twenty faculty members on two different campuses. The problems in scheduling such meetings are obvious and are compounded by the very different work schedules for the two faculties. One approach to alleviating some of the problems would be to make use of an assortment of free, online social networking tools: the meeting toolbox. The toolbox includes the following programs: Skype, Pamela, Google Docs, Jing, Doodle Calendar, Glogster, and Survey Monkey. A blog will provide a home/archive for the toolbox and the documents, recordings, and video records compiled through the use of the different tools. Hardware, such as the Pulse Smartpen, webcams, and digital video cameras may also be included in the toolbox as opportunities and needs arise. This presentation will discuss the components of the toolbox and the results of initial use of several of the tools. The use of the toolbox in online learning will also be briefly discussed.