Weekly Blog: Zoom
Before my dad retired, he frequently had to drive hither and yon around the province to various meetings. Not only would his employer (Hydro) have to compensate him for his time, gas, food, and lodgings, but these commutes were, in their own small way, contributing to this climate change thing you might have been hearing about.
Why, I thought, wouldn't they just get him to teleconference? Even just going to Winnipeg and back is four hours of driving, four hours of not being able to do anything productive.
I've kind of changed my mind, however. While teleconferencing is all well and good, it really is kind of annoying, for a few reasons.
For one, there is always that slight little delay between when you speak and when somebody else hears you. It doesn't matter how good your connection speed is, that delay will always be there. It really throws off the natural rhythms of speech.
Speaking (durr hurr) the of rhythms of speech, how many times have you and somebody else in a teleconference spoken at the same time? Something about not being in the same room ruins all social cues, so you can never tell when somebody is about to speak or not. The delay makes it even worse, and if you have a video feed of the person's face, it doesn't even help because a face on a screen is hard to read compared to one right in front of you.
The audio quality is also pretty bad, usually, and combined with the delay it makes it very hard to hear what anybody is saying.
Oh, and the technology often doesn't work. Somebody gets signed out or forgets their password or the Wifi goes down and on and on.
Now, teleconferencing is, despite all this, useful in a lot of situations. It's been very cold and snowy around here lately, and the roads treacherous, so being able to Zoom into class is pretty handy (and safe). Also, our class can have more guest speakers, and teleconferencing actually works much better when it's just one person giving a presentation, because then nobody is talking over anybody on a two second delay.
Anyways, that's it for today. The cold has kept its death grip on our fair province, so just do what I do:
Why, I thought, wouldn't they just get him to teleconference? Even just going to Winnipeg and back is four hours of driving, four hours of not being able to do anything productive.
I've kind of changed my mind, however. While teleconferencing is all well and good, it really is kind of annoying, for a few reasons.
For one, there is always that slight little delay between when you speak and when somebody else hears you. It doesn't matter how good your connection speed is, that delay will always be there. It really throws off the natural rhythms of speech.
Speaking (durr hurr) the of rhythms of speech, how many times have you and somebody else in a teleconference spoken at the same time? Something about not being in the same room ruins all social cues, so you can never tell when somebody is about to speak or not. The delay makes it even worse, and if you have a video feed of the person's face, it doesn't even help because a face on a screen is hard to read compared to one right in front of you.
The audio quality is also pretty bad, usually, and combined with the delay it makes it very hard to hear what anybody is saying.
Oh, and the technology often doesn't work. Somebody gets signed out or forgets their password or the Wifi goes down and on and on.
Now, teleconferencing is, despite all this, useful in a lot of situations. It's been very cold and snowy around here lately, and the roads treacherous, so being able to Zoom into class is pretty handy (and safe). Also, our class can have more guest speakers, and teleconferencing actually works much better when it's just one person giving a presentation, because then nobody is talking over anybody on a two second delay.
Anyways, that's it for today. The cold has kept its death grip on our fair province, so just do what I do:
Comments
Post a Comment