Sunday, November 23, 2008

WIZIQ

I was just going to post this on my blog I share with my mentor, but I thought everyone might benefit from what I learned as well.

About a month ago, Wesley and I tried to have a web conference with our students using WIZIQ. Being the (non)technology expert that I am, it wouldn't surprise you that we weren't completely successful. Surprisingly, our students were very a patient and captured audience. Wesley and I wanted to give it another shot and have been planning at another go. Wesley wrote about our attempt in our shared blog and our technology gurus came to the rescue.

Last Wednesday Dave Tarwater joined Wesley and I after school to fine tune our WIZIQ skills with a couple practice sessions. Here are some things that I learned that I thought might be helpful for you as well.

When webconferencing on WIZIQ:
*use Internet Explorer instead of Mozilla Firefox
*close all other applications to ensure best quality picture and speed
*connect your webcam before starting your session
*make sure to have searched for and installed all webcam updates before your session
*you can embed YouTube videos into your conference!!! (only YouTube)
*WIZIQ records your webconference session (audio and visual) and stores it for you to watch and/or use again (for up to 3 months I believe)
*and lastly, don't leave your soda in front of the projector fan! It gets warm and yucky :(

Wesley and I will be giving our webconferencing another shot the first week of December and I'm sure it will work magnificent this time! Thanks Dave!

3 comments:

Jeff Lewis said...

My class did a Wiziq test today with Dave in preparation for our Leadership Conference. Your tips are excellent. I would add: turn off your firewall for the session. Room 24 would love to have yours and Wes' class join us on December 5th.

Anonymous said...

Interesting Comments. I conduct lots of Scrum and Agile Trainings on WiZiQ. I have also found these tips work best:

1. Always upload your documents before hand to content area www.wiziq.com/content/ - now WiZiQ even allows logging in before the session start time for Premium Members

2. Always test out your webcam, audio devices and mic before hand

3. Have good bandwidth available and close down all applications and downloads/ Skype/ IM/ YouTube videos etc

I personally deliver sessions using Firefox 3.0 and they work really fine.

Thanks

Vikrama Dhiman

Jagdeep Singh Pannu said...

Thanks Kate for sharing your tips on WiZiQ. May I add:

* Use a headset instead of a speakers-with-a-mic combo.

More tips here

Cheers!
Jagdeep Singh Pannu
For WiZiQ