Saturday was the last scheduled Elluminate (audio-conferencing) session and more challenges. My audio disappeared and Elluminate always seems to work slowly for me and sometimes freezes up. Is this due to low bandwidth - Elluminate is supposed to be tolerant of such conditions? We sometimes record 1/10 of our promised access speeds on speed tests.
Later that afternoon however the audio disappeared completely from all applications on my laptop. Everything was set up fine and we couldn't figure out what was wrong. I made a decision, raided a hoard of nuts as it were, and invested in a brand new laptop. I'm sitting writing on it now and it's really great so far. We'll preserve the old one as the family games machine....
Overall technical problems and slow access speeds have been quite a serious issue for me on H800. Tuesday is our next informal chat on Elluminate so I'm keen to see how things behave then.
Later that afternoon however the audio disappeared completely from all applications on my laptop. Everything was set up fine and we couldn't figure out what was wrong. I made a decision, raided a hoard of nuts as it were, and invested in a brand new laptop. I'm sitting writing on it now and it's really great so far. We'll preserve the old one as the family games machine....
Overall technical problems and slow access speeds have been quite a serious issue for me on H800. Tuesday is our next informal chat on Elluminate so I'm keen to see how things behave then.
Meanwhile fellow tutor group member Tracey comments that 'sometimes I'm not sure what the objective of the session is or what outcome if any has been achieved by the end of it'. I personally question the practice of pasting extracts or summaries into text boxes on the whiteboard - my own whiteboard jumps around remorsely when this is being done, so much so that it's very difficult to look at. The whole session for me then becomes dominated by what the technology is doing rather than what I'm supposed to be learning. The best Elluminate session that I attended was when Julie made a record of what we were saying in a separate word doc and posted it in the forum afterwards. We didn't have to worry about what the whiteboard was getting up to and just spoke freely.
I will be researching use of Elluminate for low bandwidth conditions for my ECA, and also how to use it for the most productive and enjoyable learning experiences. It's a great tool with loads of potential.
Have you considered using Skype instead of Elluminate. I know that one of our group members (Barbara's group) has successfully conferenced with Skype. Seems v. tolerant of low band width and numbers joining in. You cannot of course do things like white boards and break out rooms etc. but then it seems as if your experience (like mine) is that these aren't that apparently useful anyway.
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Erubecula
Hi Freddie - thanks for your comment. I will check out Skype as an audio alternative to Elluminate. I also wanted to look at using Powerpoint or other presentations in Elluminate to give structure and visual stimulation to the session, which would be a good use of the whiteboard if successful. Whether this can be done in low bandwidth conditions is a big question. Another thing is look at is Dimdim, the open source version of Elluminate.
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Lesley