Do You Teach Synchronously as well as Assynchronously?

[Tammy Moore]

I love Elluminate for online, live classroom settings. I was wondering if any of you do any synchrnous class activities and what platform you enjoy.

[Michelle D. Catlett]

Hi, Tammy, just joined. We just made a switch from Elluminate to WebEx for pricing reasons, but we'd been quite happy with Elluminate. We use it for our students & for information sessions for our programs, but use Unyte (Skype plugin) for our business conferences since it's free.

What made you choose Elluminate? Pricing, ease of use, ?

[Tammy Moore]

We use interactive manipulative quite heavily as opposed to listening/Powerpoint style classrooms. The Elluminate had all the tools we needed to make these interactives possible. We tried WebEx and Skype (though not the plugin you mentioned) and found they didn't have the whiteboard controls we needed for those interactives. We have lots of neat hands-on slide sets that we have made and are making new ones all the time. If you ever switch back to Elluminate, we can share some with you.

Because our focus is more tutor-oriented in a homeschool co-op setting, we have very small class sizes, so we don't need the large scale, unlimited seats Academic version of Elluminate. We are a volunteer tutor group. A homeschool mom in California charitably contributes our Moodle platform/server. Each volunteer teacher kindly teaches for free and purchases their own Academic Office, Lite Office, or if they don't teach more than two students at a time, just uses the free Elluminate vRoom. The families give voluntary contributions to help their tutors/teachers with the cost of the room. Sometimes the tutors get enough to cover all the costs and rolls any extra over to the next month's Elluminate. Sometimes they end up paying the whole cost - been there and done that which was fine since I knew from the start that was a possibility.

For the tutors, it is a ministry of the heart and/or they have their own children enrolled in a class taught by another tutor and get a fair trade that way. I taught 4 classes daily: kindergarten, first, and second grade math and e-notebooking. With having four seperate classes and none needing more than a five seater, that meant that if I averaged only $3.13/student seat/month contributions my room's cost was covered. Since I had my own children taking some of the classes offered, I also got the benefit of my kids learning and sharing the experience with friends from all over the US and one student was even from Canada.

The kids and moms get together outside of class time using IM, e-mail, and Elluminate and the families have all become such good friends. We see the family that lives in our state pretty often and are planning to visit one of the families that lives 780 miles away in Souh Carolina next time we are out in that region on vacation. Both families can't wait. I doubt we will ever meet face-to-face with the families that lives all the way over in Oregon or Canada, probably not the one in Florida, but Elluminate visiting is the next best thing. We started out all being strangers, now we are all one big family. :)

[aduckworth]

My institution is looking at Elluminate to enhance our distance learning offerings and for webinar trainings in our Business and Continuing Education department. I would be interested in looking at your hands on slide sets you mentioned. Do you utilize all the components of the software (video, audio, application sharing, etc...)?

[Tammy Moore]

Sure thing! I think you will love Elluminate. You can access all of our wbd files in our courses at The Virtual Homeschool Group. All the courses are open to guests, but you will have to sign in to access downloadables.

Most of our slides are for children, but there are some sets that you may find useful. Sign into "The Live, Virtual Classroom" course and look for all the files with "(wbd) indicated in the title. You will find the sets we use for participant training, moderator training, a really neat game set (even adults like Battleship, Pente, checkers, Simon Says, etc.). To browse even the student sets, just make your way through the courses and download (wbd) files. There are LOTS of them in the K to 3rd Grade Math course especially.

I will be meeting in my vRoom tonight at 7pm central with a mom looking into co-teaching this next fall. She is already familiar with Elluminate because our virtual schools, hers in Ohio and ours here in Arkansas, both use Elluminate. But she is new to slide design, so we were going to get together to talk about how to make manipulative-based slides. You are welcome to take the third seat if your timezone will allow it. I am going to send a link to my vRoom to you via Ning's message tool. Just use it to drop in if you want to listen and participate.

[aduckworth]

Thank you for sharing! I am looking at the site now. How long have you been using Moodle? This next academic year we will be testing out other course management systems and Moodle will be one of them. We are also looking at Sakai and Angel Learning.

Unfortunately I will not be able to join you in the vRoom tonight, but thank you very much for the offer.

[Tammy Moore]

We have had the Moodle site for about 1.5 years. We have used two, mabey three, upgrades of Moodle during that time. I like Moodle. I have used WebCt from a student perspective before and didn't like it near as well as the student perspective with Moodle. Some features have been a disappointment, but usually after an upgrade or two they have things worked out. You cannot beat the price - open source and therefore free. Moodle has a great support site with very active forums. That means you can access lots of help, tips and tricks, and best practices. I have not heard of Sakai or Angel Learning. I will look them up later, after the Slide Design session.

[Tammy Moore]

Well, then again, I guess I will not be sending you a link to my vRoom via Ning's messaging tool. It isn't working right now. :(

Just use the link to it that is posted on the Virtual Homeschool Grooup's main page. See the right sidebar dor the block that is titled "Talk to a VHSG Course Attendant". I make it visible when I am open for guests and hide that block when I am not in my room or busy.

[Matt Stone]

I use Moodle with Wiziq.com, a free virtual classroom tool. I have tried Elluminate and WebEx in the past and frankly I have quit using them for two reasons. One, I had to spend at least 30 minutes with every student I tried to teach to help them install these programs (Java and what not) even when their parents didn't like it (computer crashes etc., you know). And two, these programs are too expensive for a group class. Moodle is so useful, extensive and all free and call me cheap or whatever, I think all software should be free like Skype. But using Elluminate and WebEx changes the entire economics. I recently found this service, Wiziq which is totally free and apparently I can have as many students in a classroom as I want. I really like their "no downloads" technology since I don't have to go through those installation headaches over the phone!! It is quite intuitive to use.....I prefer using audio only while they claim to have video too. They also say they record all the classes although I haven't really used that feature.
Well, I suggest you should check it out for yourself.

[Jagdeep Singh Pannu]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for your views on WiZiQ. As an update, in case you do not know yet, you can integrate WiZiQ in Moodle using the Live Class Modules for Moodle.. Please let me know if you need any help on this. You can also mail [e-mail] in case you need installation help.

[Dave Grewal]

Yea, I'm more of a WiZiQ person myself, and have had sessions with my profs on it before an exam. It has been very helpful to setup and what not cause there are not any downloads. ALso, its pretty easy to use, content and whiteboard, simple and easy, just how i like it. Content you upload your ppt, word, pdf , excel etc. and then you and the teacher can discuss. Have any other problems we just switch to the whiteboard for clarity. So, I say give WiZiQ try also.

Cheers ! :D

[Connie Mack]

Hi, I have just started using Wiziq and I really like it so far, but I wish there was more power in the testing feature........So far I don't see a way to send a single quiz without sending a file. I see where you can send a individual questions but that could get complicated after a while.........does your school use the testing features withing wiziq? I did receive a message from someone in their support dept. who says that they are going to add a feature very soon that will allow desktop sharing-that will be a nice addition.

[Karel Lukas]

I really like Yugma (www.yugma.com). It really comes with everything I need and is super easy to use. It also works on Mac, PC and Linux. They have a basic free version. I use the Pro-10 version which is only 10 bucks a month. I like their live customer support too. Oh, and they integrate with Skype and Outlook.