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:

  • Hand raising to allow “audience” to interact (fairly obvious)
  • Application sharing and passing of control  – Share any arbitrary application (like PhotoShop or the mimio studio interactive whiteboard or Microsoft Journal on a tablet PC) and then the Elluminate session becomes an ideal tool for multiple location creation of work product.  Not just presentation but interactive creation of stuff!
  • Breakout rooms – Facilitator can assign a problem and group participants into breakout rooms.  Each small group can work on the assignment and the facilitator can “visit” privately with each group (just like in the real world model of breaking up students at different tables).  Then, at the end of the activity, each group can present their solution / opinion and discussion can ensue
  • Facilitator can make a participant the presenter for a while 
  • The facilitator can place a drawing, a table, or a graph on the whiteboard and multiple participants can simultaneously add their comments or check marks. (Example from a vRoom webinar:  Find a photo on Google Images of your best example of something and place it on the whiteboard.  Example from Florida Virtual School – multilocation middle school book club – Table with character names across top and characteristics across left.  Ask students to mark which character has which characteristics.  Watching both of these things is like watching a real-time art or statistics project unfold in front of the session!)
  • Facilitator or participant “web tour” to a site to demonstrate a point 
  • The Quiz facility to send out pre-prepared quizzes to students
  • The Polling facility – and letting the moderator ask and publish ad hoc polls and their results in real time
  • Facilitator or presenter does an ad hoc screen capture to place on the whiteboard for discussion and team markup

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