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The Wimba Collaboration Suite offers a wide array of collaborative tools that allow faculty and students to retain the highly personal nature of traditional classroom instruction when working remotely from different sites. From voice to video to podcasting, the Wimba Collaboration Suite works seamlessly within blackboard courses so students never have to leave their familiar online course environments.
Wimba Voice
Wimba Voice is used to facilitate and promote vocal instruction, collaboration and assessment. It does this through its ability to allow online speaking and listening and online discussions. It is a method of providing ongoing vocal debate and interaction between faculty and students, even when they are operating from different sites.
Wimba voice can enable participation in Threaded Voice boards. These are just like a normal discussion board but with a voice component that allows listening and speaking comparisons as well as ongoing discussions about topics.
Wimba voice can enable participation in Threaded Voice boards. These are just like a normal discussion board but with a voice component that allows listening and speaking comparisons as well as ongoing discussions about topics.
Wimba Classroom
Wimba Classroom is a fully featured live virtual classroom that supports audio, video, application sharing, and content display. This enables faculty to add vitally important elements of interaction that simply cannot be provided in a text-based course.
To access Wimba click on the Communication button on the left.
Before you access Wimba Classroom it is advisable that you run the Setup Wizard. This enables you to check that your machine is set up to run Wimba Classroom effectively.
The wizard will run through options 1, 2 and 3 quickly. For option 4 it is very important to allow the applet to be run on your machine. Depending on your browser you will need to choose either Always, Run or Trust. Option 5 tests your machines ability to play sound. Once you hear the greeting click on next. At step 6 you are testing your microphone. When you hear your voice repeated back to you click on next and the congratulations screen will be displayed.
After the setup wizard has run and your machine has passed you will be taken to the front screen of your chosen room.
The Dial-in numbers are for use if you are having connection issues and need to connect using your phone.
Click the Enter Room button.
The main content window will display. This will take several seconds to load up the various sections.
Netstats: The Faculty use this to identify internet connection strength for all participants. The Faculty will see everyone’s connection, students see their own connection speed in the upper left hand corner in media center (near the number 2 above). If, as a student, you are experiencing audio problems, check your netstats and, if weak, dial in. NOTE: Weak is yellow or red colour for the Netstats.
Volume control for the application. Once selected a slider will appear above the controls. Just click and drag with the mouse to increase or decrease the volume.
Question and answer buttons. Tick = Yes, Cross = No, Hand = Ask question
Participate in class by using the emoticons that are available through the smiley face button. Starting from the top left and working across the rows they are…Clear, Away, Approve, Disapprove, Surprised, Confused, Clap, Laugh, Faster or Slower.
Get a feel for the how the class is dealing with the information by using the room pulse to how many people are attending, confused, agreeing etc.
Wimba Podcaster
Another feature of Wimba Voice is the ability to create Podcasts using the Podcaster feature. Note: The word Podcast is a portmanteau (or blend) of the words "iPod" and "broadcast" since it was for iPod’s that the first scripts for podcasting were developed.
It is easy to create a podcast by clicking on the New 1 button and then recording your message.If the message was previously recorded you can always use the import feature to upload an mp3 or wav file 2.
By using the 1-click or RSS feed button it is easy to subscribe to iTunes to get the latest podcasts as they become available 3.
You can then download the podcasts into your iPod for listening at a later time. Note: No other brand of mp3 player will work with iTunes so if you don’t own an Apple iPod you will need to listen from within iTunes itself.
Wimba further information:
Further information about is available from the Wimba website
http://www.wimba.com/support/docs.php
Please note that clicking and going to this website will count against your download quota.
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