The most common usage of synchronous learning tools.

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More than a handful of times I've been called upon to use a few synchronous learning tools - of the sort that allow for e-conferencing, or at least ones that permit one person to lecture while others leave their computers open and wash the dishes. What inevitably happens in sessions of this sort is that, rather than actually listening to the lecture and responding, or developing a group conversation, most of the time devoted to the session gets filled up with instructions like "hold down the CTRL button if you want to speak", or "does anybody hear me?". We use these tools in order to try and convince others that they should use them, but we rarely use them for actual learning/teaching.

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Go to: ... why do we want more?, or
Go to: Well, other people link to it ..., or
Go to: How to tell 1.0 from 2.0, or
Go to: It's just too Oh!