General help

This was first brought to our attention earlier this week by a student. The big M (Microsoft) has a new tool out there that is free (for the time being anyway) and they are even releasing the source code. I haven't had time to investigate beyond scanning the homepage, but it might be worth a look.

Since they are releasing the source, maybe someday it will be something to integrate into Moodle. Of course, with all things Microsoft, I doubt there will be any cross-platform compatibility.... Worth a look, anyway.

http://www.conferencexp.com/community/default.aspx

Actually, there is and I am using it.

It is called NEW (Network EducationWare) out of George Mason University. I've been using the product for several years teaching conversational English courses.

Now, I've integrated it (sort of) into my Moodle course site, teaching an upper-level undergrad course for Science Education. This blended course (asynchronous/synchronous) is produced completely with open source, non-proprietary software. I'll be doing a paper on it this summer.

Dave Bethany

Why use opensource Web Conferencing?  What are your clearly defined objectives?

Whether conferencing or webcasting, each has a limitation and overhead - both cost and bandwidth.

For the Aussie Mooters Gahter Conference we used two froms of communication throught the event - realplayer for streaming and compued for the interactive voice chat room that also has browser interface and well as a whiteboard.  

Realplayer - for streaming - the data costs can be heavy if you have a number of simultaneous connections - and hence why programs like Eluminate are expensive to use and maintain.

Compued (www.compued.com.au) is very usable over 56Kb modems and depending on the number of simultaneous connections you require, the costs are extremely reasonable.  (my costs for a 10 person room approx $100 per month. Compare this to hosting Moodle either on your own site or with a hoster the numbers add up.)

Whilst many will disagree with me - in overall terms of cost, at this point in time for a small organisation like mine, it is more economical to use a commercial package than a opensource or own hosted system. In most cases you will require a dedicated server - and someone to maintain it etc. Work the figures before you fully committ to a non comercial package in this area. 

For those interested I will be using Compued during the NZ Moot - February 3-4 - 2005, so why not log on then and experience real interaction.

Hi,

Where I work, we use Web4M from JDH Techonolgies (http://www.jdhtech.com) integrated with another course management system. While not free, it is a big magnitude less than some other web conferencing systems. It's Java-based so the server runs on anything with the Sun Java 2 JRE and any user system that supports the Sun Java 2 1.4.2+ plugin. One of the big features for us is an API for integrating authentication. In the other course management system, our systems people put in a script that automatically authenticates the students and faculty into Web4M when they click on a link in the course. I'm sure it can be done with Moodle.

Cheers,

Bob