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  Thanks for stopping by. I'm Carol Daunt Skyring & this is where I talk about videoconferencing.
  

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Janine Lim who writes the excellent blog Videoconferencing Out on a Lim is running a survey - which I know she’ll share back with you. From Janine:

The focus of this study is the videoconference coordinator and their influence on the utilization of videoconferencing in the school. The purpose of this research is to investigate the coordinator’s support of videoconferencing, and the technical and administrative issues that may affect the school’s use of videoconferencing. This study will analyze how these factors may predict the utilization videoconferencing in the school and will assist in providing knowledge on the most effective ways to support the implementation of videoconferencing in schools.

Go to Janine’s blog to read more & take the survey.

Planning for the Learning Technologies Conference on the Sunshine Coast 5-7 November is well underway.

Call for Papers is now open - and closes June 10.

Click here for more information.

Here’s a bunch of good resources at the World Bank Institute website.

There’s a good section on Selecting the Right Learning Tools and Technologies where, for each tool, they describe key characteristics, experiences and lessons learned from using the tool, suggestions for when to use it or not to use, examples, design suggestions, and additional resources. Topics covered are:

Audioconference
Audiotape
B-SPAN
CD-ROM
Development Forum
E-learning
Face-to-Face
PowerPoint
Print
Video
Videoconference

The videoconference information includes:

Definition
Key Characteristics
Our Experience
Examples
Resources
Design Suggestions

  I don’t know if you’ve clicked through to my swicki in the links column to the right. It’s set up to capture information about telepresence. At the time of writing there are 23,589 pages - at 25 links per page that’s a LOT of information about telepresence. A lot of the links are press releases about equipment, but many are what I’d call more ’serious’ links to research & hard information.

If you’re interested in tracking developments in telepresence then feel free to use it - or set up one of your own.

Go to the swicki & click on telepresence in the ‘Hot Searches’. I’m also tracking other terms on this swicki - feel free to follow them too.

  On my recent trip to the US I had the pleasure of meeting Karel Lukas from Yugma. Karel has offered 50 free education accounts with Yugma - here’s a little about the product:

Yugma is a free web collaboration service that enables people to instantly connect over the internet to communicate and share content and ideas using any application or software. Whether you are using Windows, Mac or Linux computer, you can connect on-demand and real-time with co-workers, clients, friends and family - regardless of whether they are across the city, nation or even the globe.

The name Yugma is a word from the Sanskrit language meaning “the state of being in unified collaboration.” Yugma, Inc. is a privately held venture-backed company headquartered in Minnesota , USA and has offices in Minneapolis, Mexico, Argentina and India.

The Offer

Through this blog, 50 accredited educational institutions can receive up to 100 Yugma Premium-10 accounts free of charge for one year. These accounts have access to all Yugma premium features:

• Invite up to 10 attendees
• Share Mouse & Keyboard controls with other attendees
• Annotations & Whiteboard tools
• Desktop Sharing
• Public and Private Chat
• Schedule sessions
• Web session recording
• Shared file space (up to 100MB)
• Change Presenter
• Compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux users
• Widgets available
• Email, phone and web customer support
• No sponsored advertisements

To apply for this offer go the Yugma Education Page and complete the form on the right-hand side.

(NB: I have no vested interest in this offer other than I think Karel is a nice guy & Yugma is a good product.)

Hi to everyone who was involved in the Polycom workshops this week. Below are a range of resources as promised. If you’d like more information about the 2-day workshop on which this shorter version was based, you can read more on the Workshops page.

Please feel free to email me with any success stories, problems, ideas or questions.

If you weren’t in the workshop feel free to take advantage of the resources below.

Workshop Survey

We’d appreciate if you could take 5 minutes to complete 6 quick questions that will give us some feedback about the workshop. Click here for the survey.

Resources from Polycom

The Polycom education site has stacks of resourecs and links so be sure to check them out. Click here.

Online Forum

I had started an online forum just for this group, but I’ve decided we’d be best to continue the discussion more broadly in the Videoconference group already operating in the Learning Technologies User Group (LTUG) forum. Click here to join. If you’re not already a Ning user then sign up with a password you can remember.

If you have problems - it may be that your organisation has blocked the use of Ning Hassle them to unblock it!!

Collaborations Around the Planet

This is a global large scale directory and professional network of educators for videoconferencing project collaboration. Read more about it at a previous post or go directly to the CAPs site.

Tips & Planning Sheet

Below are the Ten Tips & the Planning Sheet to download - in US & A4 size.

top-10-vc-teach-tips-us.pdf top-10-vc-teach-tips-a4.pdf

vc-planning-sheet-us.doc vc-planning-sheet-a4.doc

Slides

I’ve taken the slideshow out of here as it was scrambling things about. You can view it here.

Separated by 7,000 miles, most students at Georgetown University’s Washington, D.C. campus had never visited the Arab emirate of Qatar and wouldn’t have considered it the heart of Middle East diplomacy. That is until the university opened its School of Foreign Service in Doha and deployed Polycom RealPresence Experience (RPX) HD classrooms on each campus. With HD video, voice and content-sharing conferencing, Georgetown is bridging the distance with a natural interactive-learning environment – providing consistent-learning opportunities for students on both campuses, whilst erasing collaboration barriers and cultural divides.

Read more 

Elevate 2008 - Reaching New Heights in Educational Videoconferencing will be held in Banff, Alberta, Canada from August 24-27, 2008.

Join participants from around the world to share experiences and explore future directions in the use of videoconferencing and related technologies to support teaching and learning. I’ll be there - so I look forward to seeing you.

The Elevate 2008 program has just been updated. They have some excellent sessions - top keynotes, 6 separate breakout sessions (24 breakout sessions total), workshops Sunday through Tuesday - PHEW!!! Read all about it on the conference blog.

I’m heading off to the USA tomorrow for two weeks - so the blog will be a little quiet. I’m going to the TeleSpan Future of Conferencing Workshop - if you’re there please come & say ‘Hi’.

Then I’m heading to Texas to conduct a couple of workshops which Polycom are offering free of charge. If you haven’t booked in for these - check the attached flyer below and register here. Hopefully I’ll see some of you by videoconference in a couple of weeks.

us-workshops-april-2008.pdf

Polycom, Inc. offers Education Institutions the Polycom Honors Education Program. This program enables Education Institutions the solutions and tools to eliminate the barriers of time, distance, and resources, permitting educators and students worldwide to collaborate as if they were in the same room.The Polycom Education Honors Program is a comprehensive program allows Education Institutions to purchase Polycom equipment at an affordable rate while including:

specialized application training
beneficial association memberships
customized 60-90 minute interactive videoconference awareness training
access to missing critical content.

Read more about the Polycom Honors Program.

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  • Learning Technologies Conference: Call for Papers
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