I started this blog to introduce other teachers to two amazing ways they can enhance their classes and the way they teach with synchronous online teaching and learning. WiZiQ is equipped with live audio/video, text chat, document/whiteboard sharing, and session recording capabilities, this web conferencing tool is available for unlimited free use.
WiZiQ brings students and teachers together regardless of the boundaries. With absolutely no cost to join or use its state-of-the-art virtual classroom.
Here is what you can do with WiZiQ:
Share educational content with other members in form of PowerPoint presentations and slide shows. Find, share or download the presentations that interest you.
Upload unlimited presentations, PDFs or documents for your own private content library.
Share your content with other participants during a live session in a virtual classroom.
Virtual Classroom is your online classroom to learn or teach live.
Interactive with no time and travel costs makes it the next best alternative to face-to-face teaching and learning.
WiZiQ’s Virtual Classroom is completely web based with no software download requirements and works on any operating system including Windows, Mac and Linux.
- • Use features like live audio and video communication, text messaging, whiteboard with drawing and writing tools, PowerPoint, PDF and Flash file sharing and privileges to transfer control to any participant independently.• Search in session archives for review or reference to the previously conducted sessions.
I have held several very successful classes with WiZiq and recently held an online art critique which 25 students participated in class. Each session is recorded so that those students who were not able to participate can simply click on the link and review the entire session.
Dimdim is a free web conferencing service where you can share your desktop, show slides, collaborate, chat, talk and broadcast via webcam with absolutely no download required for attendees. I am extremely impressed with DimDim and will never pay another dime for services such as Go to Meeting again. DimDim allows me to share my desktop with my students. For those of you who know me, I teach Corel Painter classes for LVS and DimDim has given me the opportunity to reach out visually when needed to offer assistance to the student or to simply demonstrate how something is done. Artists tend to be visual learners so this has proved to be an invaluable teaching tool for me.
The Dimdim Web Meeting service is available in open source and commercial enterprise editions capable of supporting thousands of attendees. And unlike all other web meeting solutions, Dimdim is available in both onsite (you install it on your servers) and hosted (we install it on ours) configurations.
So if you are thinking about new and resourceful ways of teaching or supplementing your income via online instruction check out DimDim and WiZiQ and let me know what you think!
Karen
