Monday 7 July 2008

Free webcasting is getting better


Earlier on this year I posted an overview of DimDim the excellent and free webcasting tool, that IMHO is as good as some of the 15k - 20k established products out there. Well, just today, my good elearning friend @ Stafford Uni, Helen Walmsley gave me a quick demo of WizIQ . I'm impressed (again) - easily done! It works well, and also incorporates a kind of social networking angle into the software, buy attempting to get you to sign up to their network to share ideas, resources, etc.

If you host a meeting you don't have to install a client bit of software (As you do with DimDim), but it doesn't have desktop sharing that DimDim offers. Apart from that it's very similar to DimDim. Neither of them (video) record the whole session that some of the top products do. But I suppose you could use Wink or another "screencam " tool to do this?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
STOP PRESS - WIz IQ can record & archive sessions - my apologies - see comment at bottom of this posting.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I also sat through a demo of Adobe Connect recently which pitches Connect up in the top 3 webcasting products out there. Adobe connect can handle multiple webcams synchronously, and be able to split larger groups into smaller breakout "rooms for discussions. It can do more , but those two worked well i nthe demo.
The recent Adobe Connect archived conference session run by RSC SW is also well worth a look to experience what a recorded session looks like. Watch it @ URL : http://www.eduweb.plymouth.ac.uk/p75106536/
You can also see what the interface for Connect looks like during the video. Melanie Roberts ( elearning technologist at RSC SW) facilitated this session, which was done using a wireless connection! Scary stuff (wirelessly), but apparently it worked. Melanie contributed to our protocols (see below).
Finally, if you are thinking of using webcasting to present/discuss/teach at a distance, please peruse the list of protocols we have put togehter. Following these should make your session run much more smoothly. Please contact me if you want to contribute to these protocols.

2 comments:

Jagdeep Singh Pannu said...

Hi Kev,

Thanks for writing about WiZiQ. I wanted to inform that we do have session recordings. Every session is recorded and the recordings are accessible by using the same URL you use to access the live session. You can also access recordings from your dashboard.

Our premium service is set to roll very soon. When it goes live, premium members will have the option to keep their session recordings for as long as they want. Free members will have access to recordings for 30 days.

Thanks,
Jagdeep Singh Pannu
For WiZiQ

Technoguide said...

Thanks for the mention of Dimdim! We're about to launch our latest version which enables recordings of meetings and does NOT require you to download a thing to host or join meetings. In addition, we'll also have Mac desktop sharing, multiple presenters and private meetings, to name a few. And our free version lets up to 20 people meet in a room - and our open source server software (also free) allows unlimited attendees and simultaneous meetings.