I attended a training course in Germany...

... but did not fly over for it.

The organisers of the training course use the Internet to get attendees all over the world together one hour each day, for three consecutive days, to listen to lectures starting at 11am EST (which is 12mn, Philippine time). In short, my work days, over the course of the training, will actually spill over to the next day. The lecture series is about a software used to record and to quantify separation of molecules based on size.

The mode of delivery is interesting. The lecturer is heard over the Internet via the computer's sound system; in my case, since something's wrong with its speaker, I hooked the Mac to the stereo at home... voila! The lecture is heard in home theatre quality. :) Participants can field questions, to all participants or to the organisers only, through an online chat interface (complete with speech bubbles). The lecturer can then respond verbally during the Q&A portion. Plus, there's an additional window where the lecturer's computer screen is shown; we see what the lecturer is pointing at in real time. Since the display is small in the 13" Mac, I connected it to the telly... that really magnified the lecturer's screen a whole lot! The display is so big that a neighbour looking from across the street may be able to see that the telly has been converted into a giant external monitor.

This is the magic of the Internet: connecting people aurally and visually. And because of the time differences, people get jetlagged in the comforts of their own homes. :) Made possible by Citrix Online's GoToTraining service.

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