Sunday, April 3, 2011

Web Conferencing

After exploring the different options for video conferencing in the Web/Video Conferencing Lab, our group decided to use a different option. We used a video communication platform called tinychat that allows users to communicate via instant messaging, voice, and video chat. One group member set up the chat room and shared the URL to it with the rest of us. Our room is set up so it can be reused for more group work.  One group member recorded the tinychat session then used VisualHub to convert the file so he could upload it to YouTube and share the recording with the group. 
We actually ended up having two on-line brainstorming meetings.  After reviewing our 1st recorded session, we found that we did not take care of some important details regarding our Group Leadership Project, so we needed to meet again.  The lesson learned from this is that an on-line meeting is really like any other meeting and an agenda is a very good idea.  So, I created an agenda for the 2nd meeting to make sure all important discussion points were covered.
Advantages to using tinychat include:
  • It’s free and easy to use
  • You can set up a disposable chat room or one that you plan to reuse.
  • The chat rooms are browser-based so there is no third party software installation needed.
  • You can link from tinychat to your Facebook or Twitter account with a mouse click.
  • You can voice, video, or text chat or use any combination of the three.
 During our first meeting, my microphone would not work so I used the text chat feature to participate in the meeting.  During the 2nd meeting, one group members video was not working but we could hear her.
Tinychat will support up to twelve video feeds at once and double that amount in audio feeds.

Some of the problems we encountered using Tinychat were:
  • Lag time in voices.  You could see the person talking, but their voice followed later. We were all using wireless routers and this may have had an effect on this lag time problem.  Next time I’ll try using my Ethernet line to see if it helps with this.
  • Echoes – I think this problem could be alleviated by all parties wearing headphones.  Two people were and two were not and I think this accounted for the echoing.

Since you can embed the chat room you set up on your website, one application I could see for using this with students would be to let parents know they could conference with you on-line if they had any questions or concerns and because it supports multiple video and audio feeds, students could join the discussion.
Another way I think you could use this with students would be to have an audio chat in the classroom so students could try using a program like this with “technical support” from you.   I would do a session like this and have the topic be “Being webwise and safe on-line.

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