T.H.E. Journal Webinars

In my previous personal reflection I reviewed the T.H.E. Journal. The first reflection focused on the aesthetics, layout, and usability of T.H.E. Journal. This, along with future reflections, will focus more on the individual features, specifically those found under the Resources tab. These resources include Webinars, White Papers, Learning Centers, and Professional Development in Technology. Each resource appears to be relevant to the journal’s focus of technology in education.

The first resource I explored was the Webinars. I noticed that, aside from having a link under the Resources tab there is also a Webinars tab on the top menu. Interestingly each brought me to a different page. After some investigating I came to the realization that the individual tab on the main page led to the ten most recent productions, including the next scheduled Webinar. The link under the Resources tab, on the other hand, is more of an archive of older Webinars dating back to February, 2008. It appears that a one hour T.H.E. Journal Webinar is posted every month.

I listened to parts of a few different productions and was impressed by the high quality of the audio. Something else I really liked was the text and graphic slides presented along with the audio. The slides synched with the audio well and seemed to add quite a bit to the Webinar as a whole. The slides could be downloaded for future reference or shared with others. This could be a great way to share the information with fellow educators and librarians. Another feature I thought was helpful was the ability to skip to any part of the presentation with little more than a few second loading delay. I would find that very useful if, for example, someone wanted to listen to the Webinar in parts or wanted to hear a certain piece again. For example, I could see a school librarian or teacher using part of one of the Webinars for staff training.

One of the first things I noticed when I first opened the Webinar page is that each of the webinars is sponsored by a big name technology company including Sony, Cisco, Lenovo, Dell, and others. The topic of the majority of these Webinars relates to the use of technology in the classroom so I suppose it makes sense to have the support of a tech company. However, due to the corporate sponsorship I was weary that the speakers or editors would be biased toward certain products or ideas based on where the money comes from. In the bits that I hear, this did not seem to be the case.

I was also annoyed, although not totally surprised, that the actual intended discussion did not begin until five or six minutes into the presentation. The first five minutes was used for promotion of T.H.E. Journal and the sponsoring company. I suppose that is understandable as the majority of the users will be educators or school staffs. All in all I would say the Webinars are a great resource, especially for new school librarians or school faculty members who are less familiar with educational technology. I would definitely recommend using these webinars as a resource for finding new products and strategies to use in the school library.