550 Introduction To Distance Education

WiziQ Rapid Prototype

2007-10-24T12:06:00.001-07:00

Today Gerry and i met for about an hour using Skype, another one of my favorite apps. We sketched out what our rapid prototype will be for our demonstration. For now we have settled on using PowerPoint for it and the final presentations well. We will have slides with our screen captures on them and some slides will be text only, graphic organizers to compare different features between WiziQ and Breeze. We started by sketching some ideas for what the slides might look like for the screen captures and the text only slides. you can see those sketches HERE, HERE, and HERE.

I also went ahead and got started designing a rough layout of what are sketches might look like HERE and HERE in PowerPoint. I like how the slides turned out and I think they communicate what we are trying to highlight in each respective conferencing system. These slides are with screen captures from WiziQ only but they give you a feel for what the rest of the slides might look like. We haven't really finalized the layout of these yet, but I think they will end up not looking too different from what is posted here. We'll see....

WiziQ Test Run

2007-10-24T11:55:00.000-07:00

Gerry and I got into WiziQ tonight and I think we were both surprised by what WiziQ has to offer as an online conferencing tool. It does lack the ability to share the presenters screen which Breeze does do, but the interface is overall much cleaner and user friendly. The was no lag when we were both talking and apparently WiziQ will hold up to 25 participants in one conference. WiziQ does allow file/photo sharing including PowerPoint presentations. WiziQ is still in the Beta stages so i think screen sharing will be available soon as it seems like to valuable a tool not to have with a conferencing system. I am really impressed though that no software needs to be installed, no firewall worries for people who access it at work (I work in a k-12 school so everything is blocked here), it is totally free, and most of all, once you sign up for an account you have access to millions of other users that can be searched by name or interests or areas of specialties. We found initiating a conference to be very easy although we were only able to schedule meetings on the 1/2 hour whereas Breeze allows you to do it every 15 minutes. We tested the video out as well and it worked seamlessly for us. the whiteboard feature took a little getting used to but really is about the same as Breeze but again the interface of WiziQ is so much more user friendly. All and all we were impressed tonight and we have just scratched the surface. We took some screen captures tonight and you can view those HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Enjoy.

Technology Demonstration Project

2007-10-24T11:41:00.000-07:00

Gerry and I have finished our proposal of out Tech Project. it is called the Battle of the LMSs. You can see the entire proposal HERE. Take a look and feel free to give us any comments you like. Gerry did a great job with the outline and the Visio Flowchart. I am really happy with the way the proposal came out and I think we have a very good idea for our final project.

Technology Demonstration Idea

2007-10-24T11:31:00.000-07:00

The capstone project, if you will, of the 55o Into. to Dist. Ed. class at SDSU is to do a technology demonstration for a final class presentation. We were given several broad categories from which we could do a project, one of which was to do something using online conferencing. Recently i discovered WiziQ and thought it would be interesting to do a comparative project between the offerings of WiziQ and Adobe Breeze. Since our weekly classes are held in Breeze, I think most people in class will enjoy being exposed to WiziQ. I don't think anyone in class had heard of WiziQ before I started this project. My partner and I are still formulating what we will do exactly in the project, planning our "plan of attack" so to speak but nonetheless i am excited to see how it all pans out. As our project continues to grow I will post the different stages of this project here to keep an online record of the development of this project and presentation.