If I was to build a tool...

An incidence happened during the symposium that made me begin to re-evaluate the affordances of iMeet. While I feel the tool has potential in the future, particularly as an educational tool, at the moment there are features that might make teachers feel a bit hesitant to embrace it .The tool promises that once you set up your meeting room, the only people who are able to enter the room are guests who should be invited through an email by the host. The guests will be able to enter your room once you give them the key to access the room. Here’s is my problem. When I was doing an iMeet demo during the symposium, Mike entered the room without my invite. At that moment, it did not occur to me that I had not invited him. Later, when I realized what had happened, I began wondering if the technology provides security and privacy for both hosts and guests. So I started reading more about the tool and one of the recommendations they have is that: “change your room key often to fend off meeting crashers”! I think this is major disaffordance because having to change the URLs all the time may confuse students— what if the URLs lead them to the wrong meeting rooms!

Some of the reasons why I admired the tool was because I was able to do video conferencing as well as have my students download lecture materials and upload their assignments. I am worried that if other people might have access to the room, the class privacy is compromised. This limits what my students and I can do with this tool. If I was to build the tool, I would enhance its security and privacy features. I would also think about a feature to record class discussions or chatting (like in Convore)-- basically record all the activities that take place in the room for future reference.

But, like I said above, iMeet has a potential to improve and become a handy technology for educators. At the moment, the people behind the technology seem to be working day and night to improve its features. Some of the concerns I had when I started experimenting with it was the constant echo during conferencing. Recently they introduced a softphone feature which reduces the echo when people talk through their computer. iMeet has also gone mobile to allow people to host and hold meting while on the go.

I would still keep the tool as a backup plan in my syllabus hoping that as the owners continue building the tool, they address some of the concerns I raise.