[Technical] Using IRC for student development collaboration

[Clark, Ian C]

The infrastructure's certainly always been there. Soon after the start
of Vicone back in 97, the Department established a directory server that
PC or Mac Netmeeting clients could use to do chat, electronic
whiteboard, application sharing and videoconferencing, even though most
schools only had 64kb ISDN WAN connections!

These days, there's also a Live Communications Server 2005 SP1 (if
you're a state school, you can purchase it for $7 from Ipex) setup at
Spring Street that TSPs have been involved with testing, and it works
really well. Last term, a colleague was able with a webcam to give me a
really good tour of his computer office in the Mornington Peninsula.
Prior to that, he had set up an open source Jabber server at the same
school.

So why isn't use of real time communications more widespread in Vic
schools? I thought Stephen summed up the hazards fairly well from a
teacher point of view. A completely open implementation means it's
really hard for staff to keep kids "on task".  Students might rate the
technology's social value much higher than its educational value, and in
turn, teachers might find they have to limit its use to get the best out
of it.

So, staff might decide to make it available only to those students doing
conferencing with another school for a special event, or to teachers in
rooms that don't have an internal phone, for instance.

Cheers,
Clarky



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