Okay, I admit it...I was a bandwidth hog today! I am usually very polite and careful not to chew up the infrastructure of the Internet, but today I was wasteful. However, I was conducting an experiment.
This may not sound too interesting to you, but it was a lot of fun! As you may know, I am a school district technology administrator. My good friend, Midge Frazel, is a technology consultant and also is in the throes of an online Master's program in educational technology.
I wanted to "pretend" we worked together in a traditional office setting, and that our cubicles were next to one another. In order to simulate this, we both kept the audio portion of Skype open all day long. As I took phone calls and people came into my office (I warned the visitors), Midge was treated to a "day in the life of a technology administrator." I, on the other hand, got a glimpse into the life of a busy graduate student taking courses online. We conversed at times, just like we would if we worked in neighboring cubicles, but, mostly, we really just went about our work.
(The downside is that we could not go to lunch together, nor could I watch Days of Our Lives while Midge was able to watch her soap.)
How cool would it be for professional people in the working world to give kids the same experience? Eavesdropping on a physicist or astronaut for a day would be quite the virtual experience and would give students a better understanding as to what goes on in all types of occupations and environments.
(Okay, I really do not feel so bad about chewing up the bandwidth now that I have come up with an educational excuse for doing so!)
Any takers to "work" in the next cubicle for a day?
Kathy Schrock
