The inservice will be held at Riverside Girls High School, Sydney, and it is an Education Department school. This in turn means that filtering and security is tight, often too tight for progressive teachers. Because of this security, I initiated a series of steps to test out various things to make sure we indeed can run a successful Elluminate session at Riverside Girls High School.

Courtesy of coolcatteacher, I became aware that Elluminate was offering a free 12 month subscription for their lite version. Consequently, I subscribed on behalf of my school.

I created a virtual room and asked a couple of computing teachers to attempt to login and if successful we would interact about VET IT. One of the teachers was from rural New South Wales and was not able to login from her department school. The other teacher was able to login from an internet hotspot at one of the cafes near a meeting he was attending. The unsuccessful login was a learning objective in its own right.

My next step was to create a virtual room on April 8th that was open for 24 hours, advertise it on csteachers (the csta’s electronic forum), and monitor the successful logins or lack thereof. It was very interesting. Most teachers could not log in from their schools. Messages flew back and forth on csteachers that tried to resolve the settings that were needed. A very few number of department schools succeeded. Most teachers that tried from home outside of school hours were successful. (Phew!)

Prior to the April 8th experiment, Elluminate was little known. However, after the experiment, most computing teachers at least know the title of the software.

We did discover that Riverside Girls High School can indeed access an Elluminate room through the department infrastructure. We are not sure why other department schools are unable to gain access. This in turn means that we have a high percentage chance of success to run an Elluminate session at our May 19th meeting.

Failing that, the presenter will have his own laptop with mobile broadband capability to access the Elluminate virtual room and present in a physical classroom and in a virtual room for the teachers in rural New South Wales.

Here’s to a successful Elluminate session!

The end goal is to be able to offer some CSTA workshops through web collaboration software so that teachers in rural NSW will not be so professionally isolated.

Part One:

• the moderator assigns tools like rights and permissions
• one should use the audio wizard first and at least once daily to make sure one’s system is functioning properly.
• avoid audio echo. Almost an etiquette
• it can be difficult to be a moderator and keep up with all the dynamic changing symbols
• if someone lags behind (out of syncronisation), accelerated playback kicks in & the person sounds like Alvin from the Chipmunks fame.
• when people are out of sync, it is just best to pause the use of the microphone for a few seconds.
• the whiteboard area is used exclusively to do a show & tell. Good for instructional type presentations.
• the whiteboard impacts everyone and participants can make changes
• powerpoint has to be converted first, loses all transitions and nifty effects.
• up to 6 talkers can talk at once, probably not practical, but two will suffice.
• application sharing is terrific but not available in Lite
• polling has impact upon the pacing, instructor can make sure participants understand, encourages interactivity and helps keep thing focused. Moderator can lock answers, hide answers, publish answers and some other options.
• video: seems to be used in a limited fashion due to the shyness of everyone. A still image is usually displayed as well.
• use of video is limited only by one’s imagination
• one video at a time is used – fine colour or medium colour can be used. If recording a long session like 3 hours, use medium colour to save storage space.
• a new moderator should practice with 2 computers side by side and / or with 2 people.
• vRoom can be used. A free version with 3 participants is available.

Part Two consisted of:

• whiteboard tools were explored
• objects can be locked on the whiteboard
• puzzles have to have individual pieces uploaded, possible games for chess
• one can create their own clip art
• explore screens, save sessions, moderators can cut, copy, paste
• screens can be copied out of breakout rooms
• screen explorer is very powerful
• one can save a screen, eg polling
• whiteboard can be protected, exported as pdf or png
• wbp (whiteboard protected cannot be saved NOR printed)
• screen group eg. 39 slides, current screen, selected screens

Sharing tools:

• one opens applications
• don’t minimise the application window
• windows are automatically resized
• start, stop, snap shot
• cntrl + spacebar == regain control
• select name, right click, give control, request control on top of window
• preview: bring up thumbnail, don’t put anything on top of application
• can take a snap shot of image
• copying and pasting from one computer to another will NOT work

Web Tour:

• shares a web browser
• opens a browser instance
• interacts individually, 12 participants can go 12 different ways
• Moderator can syncronise and re-syncronise when moderator clicks (tour guide)
• Moderator over rides and multiple students share the same web browser
• publish URL and the URL goes into the chat area (called pushing out).

Part Three consisted of:

• presentation mode can be used (one huge screen)
• presentation mode can be used with whiteboard or application sharing
• one can get back into default view by using the proper icon
• the yellow around the whiteboard indicates full presentation is being used
• application button can be difficult to see
• would use this when a specific focus is required

Breakout rooms

• one on one or do small group work
• one can create rooms manually or automatically.
• one can preload content onto the breakout room screens
• screen explorer allows one to move participants
• each breakout room seems to have one whiteboard
• students can’t move from room to room whereas moderators can
• announcements will be received in all breakout rooms
• a timer can be set
• can copy and paste each breakout room to the main room
• tools -> whiteboard -> explore screen -> expand tabs -> highlight participants -> copy

Notes:

• notes can be written and saved as text or eln (elluminate note).
• one can share notes or combine notes
• notes automatically saved.

File transfer:

• icon: folder with the green arrow
• when uploading a dynamic graphic appears, wait until 100% is indicated
• 10 mb upload limit
• green disk means saved, yellow in progress
• if file upload is not to be made public, untick the proper box (pre-loading)
• multi media content is downloaded to individual computers. Must have proper plugins

Record session:

• can be automatic or manual, can pause
• automatic save is probable
• the only human error that can take place is turning Record on
• erase is allowed
• indicator changes when recording
• when recording is finished, a link is emailed to participants?
• recordings can be converted (for a fee) for portability
• quick reference for each task is available