How did I feel about connecting in Google Hangout? Well, it was better than my first endeavor (with a group unrelated to this class), when I couldn't get video to work at all!
As my colleague Catharine has mentioned in her blog, we used a bricks-and-mortar work-around, in that when we couldn't connect with video on our office desktops, she joined me in my office to use my own computer where video was working. However, since my Samsung slate has two video cameras, I now need to figure out how to activate the correct one; Mahmoud never did see us, as the camera in the back of the slate was active.
I found the discussion around our concerns about online language instruction fascinating. One of the principle pedagogical tenets that I adhere to in all teaching is that students must be exposed to comprehensible input at roughly I+1 in order to progress, and I've been thinking a lot about how to accomplish this goal in a fully online class. Mahmoud's observations about the use of authentic documents/texts in online classes were helpful. It's also clear that he faces technological challenges in teaching a non-western language online that do not apply to the languages I teach.
We also discussed the realities of our different student populations. Catharine and I noted that the many obligations in our community college students' life (work, family, classes) can induce them to take online classes as an expedient, and thus their motivation for taking online classes may not match their ability to succeed in the online environment.