Video Conference in Education

The idea for the Plan Ceibal en Ingles (Plan Ceibal English) project in Uruguay developed because of a shortage of English teachers in the country. Experienced young learner teachers from elsewhere (Montevideo, Argentina, the Philippines) are brought into the classroom remotely via video-conferencing technology to teach once a week and to help the children's existing classroom teacher, who knows little or no English, to teach two follow-up lessons consisting mainly of practice activities. The classroom teachers are also learning English to enable them to better teach the children in the future.

Through research, evaluation and feedback from children, both of the teachers and other involved parties, we are learning much about this unique flavour of teaching, which requires the remote teacher to present and model the language and the classroom teacher to manage the class. The demands on the remote teacher are high, having to project themselves through the camera into the classroom, engage the learners and manage a variety of technology, including the video conferencing equipment and a laptop with a variety of software and websites so that the teacher can present language, practise pronunciation, show songs and videos, play games, etc. Despite this, what we have found is that the same good practice that applies in the standard primary classroom also applies in this setting, although many tried-and-tested young learner activities and routines have to be adapted to fit the special circumstances.

As well as discussing the practice of remote teaching in this context, informed by existing research, I will also present an analysis of the results of surveys undertaken of school heads, teachers, parents and children and discuss the results of the external evaluation report on the children's progress in English.

The chapter would begin with an outline of the context of the teaching and learning situation in the country and a brief description of Plan Ceibal and its achievements prior to the English programme, which include the distribution of laptops to every state school child and teacher in the country and the setting up of free to schools country-wide high-speed Internet.

This would be followed by a literature review, examining  the relevance of not only studies of best practice for young learners of this age-group (8-12), but also previous attempts in other countries to do something similar (e.g. Plasma Teaching in Ethiopia, the Hole-in-the-Wall project in India) and how the Plan Ceibal English project has learned from these.

Next would be an examination of the special circumstances of this blend of team-teaching and what we have discovered to be successful, based on observation of classes and feedback from all parties concerned, including external project evaluations.

After looking at the lessons learned and changes made so far to the project, I will outline the plans for the future and also discuss what would need to be done if a version of this project were implemented in other countries or areas around the world.

Kebutuhan akan suatu pembelajaran online atau disebut eLearning pada era 4.0 menjadi tidak terelakkan lagi. Moodle adalah salah satu aplikasi pendukung pembelajaran online Selain Moodle ada juga video conference, yang cara penyampainnya bersifat realtime (langsung). Dalam Penelitian ini, Akan diintegrasikan Moodle dan video conference dalam satu aplikasi elearning, sehingga fungsi e -learning sebagai media pembelajaran berbasis web dapat juga melakukan video conference sesama peserta dan pengajar dalam satu kelas e-learning.

Perangkat yang digunakan adalah Personal Computer (PC) sebagai server, dan beberapa buah Personal Computer (PC) yang digunakan sebagai client. Dimana implementasianya berupa aplikasi Moodle ditambah fitur baru, untuk dapat melakukan video conference. Salah satu media server yang dipakai dalam melakukan video conference adalah Open meetings. Dalam tahap analisis, dilakukan analisa berdasarkan pengujian, parameter performansi seperti throughput, packet loss, delay, dan time sangat dipengaruhi oleh besar bandwidth, ukuran file, dan jumlah user . dalam melakukan video conference, sehingga mendapatkan hasil yang dapat dijadikan acuan dalam penerapannya.

Dari hasil penelitian terlihat bahwa moodle dapat diintegrasikan dengan video conference, dan hasil dari analisi video conference yang dilakukan dikatakan baik, sesuai dengan standar dari parameter sehingga dapat diterapkan.

Kata kunci : aplikasi moodle, pembelajaran eLearning, Video Conference

Corona Virus Disease or known as COVID-19 has had a profound impact that has spread among every cycle of educational context in a short period of time. In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, foreign language education, which was one of those affected cycles of educational context, had to be conducted by quitting physical settings, and the new normal was changed into working or studying from home. In the emergency circumstances in the pandemic, failure of education and losing social relationships were the most common types of threat experienced by all stakeholders such as students, teachers and educators. However, with the help of video conferencing tools, those threats were easily overcome. Thus, in foreign language education online synchronous lessons, classes and meetings became the new routine. This means in the age of lockdowns due to COVID-19, video conferencing tools helped people stay connected. One of those platforms used for foreign language teaching and learning was Google Meet. Driven by this perspective, the objective of the present study is to document the positive aspects of Google Meet by thematically analyzing the related literature. For the data collection phase of this qualitative descriptive study, the three words - “Google Meet”, “language education” and “COVID”- were searched by using Google Scholar, and among the results, the three studies indexed in Web of Science were selected for analysis. The following seven themes were generated by the thematic analysis of the three studies on Google Meet in foreign language education context: Google Meet (1) is easy to access, (2) aids the transition from face to face to online teaching, (3) acts an effective and efficient synchronous tool for online foreign language education, (4) is user-friendly, (5) reduces the fear factor during the pandemic, (6) provides a safe environment, and (7) mediates real-time communication and interaction. The results of this study are thought to provide contributions for efficient and effective use of video conferencing tools for online foreign language education.
Keywords: Google Meet, Online foreign language education, Video conferencing tools, COVID-19

Bermula dari era revolusi pada tahun 1760 dimana bermunculan mesin-mesin bertenaga air atau uap hingga dimulai penggunaan internet di era revolusi industri 4.0 dimana bermunculan penggunaan mesin pintar dan penyimpanan awan (cloud storage) yang memudahkan kita dalam mengakses berbagai hal di selancar internet, khususnya untuk dunia pendidikan.
Berbicara mengenai pendidikan, dunia pendidikan saat ini tengah di guncang oleh sebuah virus yang pada awal kemunculannya memaksa sekolah-sekolah baik negeri maupun swasta untuk meliburkan segala aktivitas pembelajaran di ruang sekolah dan mengalihkannya pada kegiatan-kegiatan pembelajaran berbasis daring yang bisa dilakukan di rumah.
Beragam bentuk-bentuk media pembelajaran yang sebelumnya jarang digunakan, justru menjadi media pembelajaran yang efektif ditawarkan di internet seperti Zoom, Google Meet, Google Classroom, dan kemudahan akses berbagai materi pembelajaran sangat membantu bagi tenaga pendidik dan siswa di era pandemi. Hal ini membuat penggunaan internet sebagai sumber belajar meningkat tajam di masa pandemi. Seperti yang dikatakan oleh Adri pada tahun 2017 (Dalam Setiyani, 2010: 118) bahwa sumber belajar dapat berasal dari buku, jurnal ilmiah, internet, majalah, koran, televisi, dan sebagainya.
Untuk itu, diperlukannya pengetahuan lebih mendalam mengenai media pembelajaran yang dapat digunakan dalam mendampingi akses pendidikan. Dengan adaanya internet ini diharapkan akses dunia pendidikan tidak hanya dirasakan oleh siswa-siswa yang bersekolah di sekolah formal, namun dapat di akses oleh berbagai kalangan dan belajar dapat dilakukan di mana saja, kapan saja, dan dalam bentuk apa saja.

The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply affected all aspects of life, including the foreign language teaching contexts. Universities and schools abandoned classrooms and moved into online education settings. During immediate lockdowns which brought physical distancing, terms like “online”, “virtual”, and “distant” education started to dominate language teaching and learning. Universities and related institutions tried to ease the immediate transition from face-to-face education to online platforms while students and teachers began working from their homes. Educational institutions have taken advantage of various online synchronous platforms to quickly find an alternative way for face-to-face classes in the COVID-19 pandemic. One of those platforms that have been extensively used during these emergency circumstances is Zoom which is a video conferencing and online meeting service for both individual and group classes. Within this frame, this qualitative descriptive study aims to conceptualize the benefits of Zoom as a synchronous tool for online foreign language education at tertiary level during the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to reach the objective, first the related literature on three specific words “Zoom”, “language education” and “COVID-19” was concentrated by using Google Scholar search engine. Then, in order to limit the studies, the researchers focused on the ones indexed in the Web of Science. Thus, a total of four theoretical and empirical studies were collected and inductively analyzed. This inductive analysis revealed five main themes; Zoom (1) embodies beneficial functions and tools for educational contexts, (2) mediates the transition from face-to-face education to online education, (3) creates a psychologically comfortable atmosphere for online education, (4) provides synchronous interaction, communication and cooperation, and (5) helps develop foreign language skills. Additionally, based on these themes and the relevant literature on the benefits of Zoom, the researchers uncovered the associations among these five themes to conceptualize the actions and processes of forming the positive contributions of Zoom on foreign language teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Keywords: Zoom, Foreign language education, the COVID-19 pandemic, Online education

Videoconferencing is an interactive tool that incorporates audio, video, and computing, and communications technologies to allow people in different locations to electronically collaborate face-to-face, in real time, and share all types of information including data, documents, sound and picture. In essence videoconferencing removes the barrier of distance that separates us.