Implementation of vocal and visual chat like paltalk

Implementation of vocal and visual chat like paltalk

by jean-marie baltimore -
Number of replies: 4
I think it would be nice to have a chat system that allows students and tutors to communicate vocally . Something like paltalk. You could write, use the video and talk. This would be the ultimate in collaborating, wouldn't it ? 
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In reply to jean-marie baltimore

Re: Implementation of vocal and visual chat like paltalk

by Martin Dougiamas -
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Absolutely - some synchronous capability is very much needed. But remember that there is actually no need to have this built-in to Moodle. You could just tell everyone to use Paltalk or ICQ or whatever and run it alongside Moodle.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Implementation of vocal and visual chat like paltalk

by jean-marie baltimore -

Sure enough ! But i only suggested that because you talked about the eventuality of adding up a chat module to moodle. So I said to myself  let it be vocal and visual.

Obviously one can still connect to IRC or Paltalk ! In fact i've been looking for an open source software that could to the job (if not built in ito moodle at least linked to it in a way or another like they do in CMS like postnuke, xoops, PHPnuke). As a matter of fact it would be even nicer if moodle as a whole could be part of a larger cms like xoops (which I'm familiar with) : you shouldn't have this way to worry about those things.

I'm working mainly with languages and without synchronous capability i feel quite stranded 

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In reply to jean-marie baltimore

Re: Implementation of vocal and visual chat like paltalk

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Yes, I can understand. I was just pointing it out as a practical solution while we are all waiting for synchronous Moodle modules. Those voice companies have already done all the hard work. smile

It's my experience that synchronous stuff is almost always difficult to get working properly on all platforms (client and server), not to mention different firewalls and bandwidths. Text/whiteboard will be difficult enough, but I fear streaming audio/video is going to be nearly impossible to implement on most people's Moodle servers with any degree of reliability. In many ways it's much worse to implement something that only works for a few people than to just not implement it at all.

That said, I recently saw an implementation of Moodle with HearMe embedded in a frame to the side - it "just worked" for me on Windows XP which was nice for a change and I had a good chat to the guy who set it up. Unfortunately it isn't open source, but if we can find a good Open Source solution for this I'll be "on to it like a shot", believe me. smile

Out of interest, have you used PalTalk (or something similar) for educational conversations? How did it go?

Cheers,
Martin
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In reply to jean-marie baltimore

Re: Implementation of vocal and visual chat like paltalk

by Panagiotis Tatinas -

Well, although visual communication would be difficult enough to be implemented how about text communication?

It wouldn't be that difficult, would it? For example a teacher could set some hours of the week  to be on line and solve a students' questions, or they all could discuss a subject.

How about it?

 

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