Musings - Just Learning

A look at the WiZiQ Interface

The weather here in Montreal has been blindingly beautiful, but the last week has provided much distraction with new web-based tools and environments to explore. It seems that there has been an explosion of synchronous environments in the last few weeks.

This morning I just missed a meeting of a number of educators (which I heard about via my twitter), mostly in the other hemispheres, led by Jeff Utecht in Shanghai, of a new environment called WiZiQ. The link will bring you to their archived recording once you sign in. I am waiting on Jeff to provide more information, but as you can see, it provides audio, chat, whiteboard, powerpoint and an asynchronous environment with such features as mail and calendar. I am hoping this will be either low cost or free (UPDATE -IT IS FREE!) It seems entirely web-browser based - no special downloads. Another tool which could very useful for classes wanting to meeting globally!

Jeff has just twittered to me that WiZiQ is free with unlimited seating, but with no desk-top sharing. If you are looking for an environment like this, check it out!

Of course, the big buzz earlier this week was about the release of Google Presentation. Over fifty educators from around the world have been editing a slideshow presentation that has been viewed by now by hundreds and currently has well over 1100 edits. I am particularly impressed with the chat feature it offers so the audience can also share their views about what they are seeing. If you would like an invitation to edit, just email me. This tool holds great promise for collaborative sharing between classes. To find Presentation, go to the top left of your gmail page and click on documents, then you will see the option along with docs and spreadsheets.

Of course, people are still talking about FlashMeeting as well. I have known a few educators in the last few days that have stated that they are booking FlashMeeting time with the folks over at Open University in the UK. If you are interested in making contact with them in order to book a time, email me and I will happily pass along the information.

On Thursday and Friday, I had the great pleasure of meeting Michael Furdyk (co-founder and director) and Luke Walker from TakingITGlobal as they had come to Montreal to train the school boards’ ICT consultants as well as those of us at LEARN about how to use their learning environment for education. LEARN is arranging for all the schools in the English sector of Quebec to have access to the tools and environments of the educational features of TakingITGlobal, which opens up exciting possibilities for classes from Quebec to connect locally and globally. The classroom walls are being flattened in Québec!

We HAVE to have Michael and Luke with us on a WOW2 webcast - am working on that along with some teachers here in Québec who are getting involved with TIGed.

I was quite impressed with the sophistication of tools available in the TIG environment. They celebrated their seventh birthday the other day, have over 150,000 participants (mostly youth) from every country in the world, offer services in 12 languages (with many more to follow), and have largely been a grassroots movement with a focus on connecting youth for the purpose of social activism. They also offer the ability to set up classes with chat and video for expressly educational purposes. Only a small percentage of their users are students involved in a class, most of the participants have joined on their own in order to meet others and work collaboratively on projects on their own initiative.

What does all of this mean? It means that connecting with other educators and students around the world has never been easier and cheaper!

So what is stopping YOU from making a global connection?

By the way, my twitter name is speters - so please be sure to add me if you are using twitter. It seems to be the number one way I am keeping up with what is happening in the moment!