Here’s an interesting post from a student taking two online classes, one using Elluminate Live! and the other using iLinc. Check out which one he likes better and why.
And here’s another one that comes to us from New Zealand comparing Elluminate Live! and Skype.
Gotta love those unsolicited testimonials!
- Beth for Elluminate
Want to see what’s new with Elluminate Live! V8? We’re providing a sneak preview of all the new and exciting features, like personal note taking, enhanced video, indexed recordings, in-session times, and more.
My personal favorite is the ability to take notes right on the screen during a session, which can be added to or edited during playback. You can even export your notes to a file to create a text transcript or provide hard-copy review materials for exams.
Join Elluminate Product Manager Valerie Schreiner on May 17, 2 PM EST (GMT -4 hours) and see for yourself. Register now!
- Beth, Elluminate Goddess of Communication
Gary here again on a bright and sunny New Hampshire morning,
The question of the week has been: How do you use interactive whiteboards with Elluminate? This could be a book length topic, but I will try and summarize, with examples and some vendor references.I would rather call this topic “Multi-user, multi-location collaborative drawing spaces and handwritten computer input” because ultimately, that’s what we are talking about. (But then it would have to be a peer-reviewed journal article, so I’ll just stick to “Interactive whiteboards and webconferencing.”)
What are they: Sometimes it is really important to interact with and manage a Windows or Mac desktop, its applications, specialized drawing applications, and handwriting from the front of a room on a large surface. An interactive whiteboard allows you to do this. Some of them have built-in projectors, some of them use standard presentation projectors, and some of them are “overlays” for a plasma screen. But the bottom line is that a number of vendors supply the ability to use a variety of computer applications on an interactive surface with pen-style input and control devices. At the end of the day, think of an interactive whiteboard as a humongous touch screen or pen-input computer monitor at the front of the room.
How do you set them up with Elluminate: To utilize an interactive whiteboard with Elluminate, you follow the manufacturer’s instructions to get your PC or Mac connected (wired or wirelessly) to the whiteboard. Each vendor has pages where you can learn more about planning for and actually connecting and setting up their products.
The whole is greater than the sum of the parts: Once you get an interactive whiteboard up and running and enter an Elluminate session, the possibilities are far more rich than just “projecting” your desktop to participants in a remote location. Think interaction, collaboration, visual and auditory learning, think kinesthetic learning, and think of things that were not physically possible prior to the melding of interactive whiteboards and Elluminate.
Here are a few examples you can try and expand upon in an Elluminate session using an interactive whiteboard:
Teach the pythagorean theorem. Create breakout rooms and have some of the students research the various proofs while others are working on the “graphical” portion of the activity. Have a student in one location draw a 3-4-5 right triangle on a grid. Have another use tools to measure the angles. Discuss the theorem and its proofs. Copy and paste the “3″ side of the triangle to square it to make it length “9″; Do the same with the “4″ side to make it length 16. Rotate and move these lines end to end (or use the ruler tool) to show they add up to 25. Ensure that different locations have different activities in the assignment. Reconvene and have the graphics team show their results and the “proof research team” show some alternate proofs they found. This could have been done without Elluminate, but with it you get multiple teams working on different parts of the problem at the same time, you have students as co-teachers, and there is a level of interaction that will make the lesson more realistic and memorable to many of the students. What would you do to make this a better exercise?
With a student who has handwriting issues, have a local instructor or remote instructor (or even a parent at work!) join a session on a tablet PC or another interactive whiteboard. The remote student or parent will be providing verbal encouragement as well as the ability to have the local student watch handwritten letters “form” in front of them. The writer who is modeling the handwriting will use a thicker font in black. The student will then trace the letter in a lighter color with a thinner line, alone, or hand over hand with the local instructor. When finished, the instructor “moves” the black ink out of the way, and the student’s writing remains. This can be printed for the student’s portfolio, for later use in a paper-only exercises, and even recorded for future review by the student in class or at home with the parents. This lesson could have been done on paper only, but with an interactive whiteboard and Elluminate, you get peer modeling, a real-time visual “view” of the construction of handwritten letters, as well as a recordable and printable record of student work for self-review and review with parents. What would you do to make this a better exercise?
In the “geography game show” multiple sites alternate as the host and the contestants. This can build public speaking and social skills as the classes act as host in addition to the geography skills. The host team points to a location on the map. The first contestant site to type in the correct answer wins a point for that round. Additional exercises can be things such as: breakout rooms where small groups research and write short paragraphs about their favorite location discussed today; bonus points in a poll for the “best host”; and bringing in a “guest speaker” from a featured location reviewed in the lesson. This activity could have been performed “in class” but the addition of Elluminate brings in numerous student interactions and educational possibilities. What would you do to make this a better exercise?
I hope that this post shed some light on some of the the possibility. There are many sites on the web and content vendors that specialize in activities for interactive whiteboards. Why don’t we, together, show them how to extend these exercises and the learning opportunties they present into the world of Elluminate real-time collaboration?Best regards to all, and keep onlinin’
Gary
Hi,
Gary here.
We helped Harold Jarche (http://www.jarche.com/?p=1122) with service for a webinar the other day. Great webinar Harold!
But, we failed him (sorry Harold) and likely others in that we need to do a better job of explaining what Elluminate can do. Elluminate is indeed not designed just for for “presentations” and, in fact, more than one person can speak at the same time. I’ll try and keep this “blog length”, but feel free to jump in in the comments area.
Multiple speakers: Elluminate can have more than one speaker (up to 4 simultaneous speakers can be mixed in full-duplex mode). Elluminate sessions default to one speaker at a time – and this is often a good thing, especially in webinars with many newbie participants, because it eliminates the possibility of an audio feedback loop. However, when you have “regulars” (like in a regular class or a group of peers or other groups that you know all have headphones OR an echo cancelling mic) you can in fact have heated, multiparty discussions and ignore the Elluminate “mic” button. Important caveat – headphone or echo cancelling microphone is a must when you want multiple simultaneous speakers.
Highly interactive: While Elluminate, like other webconferencing solutions, can facilitate “death by PowerPoint” we include a plethora of facilities to allow a facilitator (notice I didn’t say presenter) make a session highly interactive. I enjoy Elluminate most when the facilitator doesn’t use PowerPoint – but instead does a number of other things. Here are a few of these things:
These are just some examples of the ways in which Elluminate can be used beyond being a mere a remote PowerPoint slide injector. Assignment (not specifically to Harold, but to all!): In your next web conference, try not to use PowerPoint at all and see what magic happens.
Best regards to all, and keep onlinin’
Gary
The Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ascilite) provides a forum to stimulate discussion of relevant issues in the educational use of technology, including interactive multimedia. The Society also promotes research and evaluation.
Their blog archives include a library of podcasts about a wide variety of topics, including how learning objects are used, mobile devices in practice, and online assessment and feedback.
One such podcast features Stephen Rowe from Australia’s Southern Cross University who discuss audiographics teaching in a business faculty. Of course, we’re pleased that Elluminate Live! is the application of choice.
- Beth for Elluminate
Here’s an interesting question: Should technology be familiar (learn about it to maximize use) or should it be transparent to the user? I started thinking about this after reading a blog entry by Lynn, an experienced learning and development professional.
From my perspective, the answer is YES! Using Elluminate Live! as an example, there’s a learning curve to understand the functionality of the web collaboration environment. Then, as our clients tell us, the technology becomes transparent, allowing moderators and participants to focus on teaching and learning. So in this case, invisibility follows familiarity.
Then there’s the question of universal design, as my colleague Gary poses in his blog entry of 4/2/07. Of course, the ultimate goal should be to build in accessibility from the beginning. Easy to say, harder to do. Take a look about what Elluminate has to say about accessibility.
And as for Lynn’s car example, I have a different view. Much to the dismay of my husband, my interest in automotive technology stops at turning the key!
- Beth for Elluminate
Here’s a new blog called EdTechWays. It’s specifically about the use of educational technology in biomedical and health institutions in a graduate and post-graduate setting. Although just starting out as a presentation platform for students in a specific class at UT Southwestern Medical Center, I think it’s one to watch.
The March 2 blog entry lists Elluminate customer, the University of Kansas Medical Center, as a key resource for tips for instructors to consider when using eLearning tools. One of Elluminate’s 2007 Center of Excellence winners, KUMC delivers synchronous course content nationwide for students in its Allied Health, Medicine, and Nursing Schools.
- Beth for Elluminate
Hi,
Gary here, after three long weeks on the road. (Yes, that is ironic from a webconferencing company – but managing ongoing relationships takes occasional F2F and the frequency of rich interactions that webconferencing allows.)
So, anyhow, the three conferences I attended were very interesting. I have boiled down one big question from each of these conferences. Clearly, there were many more questions answered and raised – but hey, this is a BLOG and not a book. (Not yet anyway.)
Here they are…
From the Alliance for Distance Education in California conference – my big question:
From the Apple Digital Campus Leadership Institute and the Georgia Digital Innovations group at Georgia College and State University - my big question (after I watched a student presentation on their trip overseas):
From CoSN 2007 – my big question:
As you may imagine, I have my opinions on these questions. However, what are yours? Please comment!
Warm regards, and keep onlinin’,
Gary Dietz
