Online Teaching : The e-Teaching Community

Thanks Harman, we've been playing with it for over a week now. Ben Stewart has been trying to stream videos with it with wome success.

My particular use is with students who bring favorite websites to class for ESL. Sure wish we could load several sites at once to flip forward and back with. Also it has very limited use until we can access at least a few pointer tools (e.g. pointer tool and/or whiteboard tools).

But, even though I complain I really do like having the beta available to begin testing with.

OOPS I thought you were talking about the Browser feature.... Never mind :)

Called Ben as soon as I figured out what Harman was talking about...
Cool, High speed - low drag (Americanism usally about cars), THIS IS NICE

Ben took about 5 minutes to figure out how to set it up (because I wanted to smoke before participating in such an exciting event! He said it was pretty easy (I still cannot find the easy button you guys are talking about).

He sent me the URL link...
first launch attempt after Ben gave link... waited 2 minutes to connect
second attempt... boom! 1 second I'm in
it took about 2 minutes get synced screen
everything looks great
Had what seemed like a fairly normal 0.5 to 1 sec lag in audio
Turned off video feed at Ben's end... still a small lag in audio
We were also able to easily surf for videos on Youtube and watch them.
However Ben had to switch from his Microphone to "Stereo" to allow listening of said videos

Here is the link for the recording of our trial run.

http://www.wiziq.com/tutorsession/detail.aspx?id=5CAC247E658A4890A8BE97DB44A236F6

Well done, Harman and WiZiQ team! First impressions are good...tested this morning and I definitely like what I see!

Harman,

I just saw our recording:

http://www.wiziq.com/tutorsession/detail.aspx?id=5CAC247E658A4890A8BE97DB44A236F6

and what we saw in the class does not appear. Are there plans to include this or allow screen sharing to be viewed in the recordings?

Watched (and listened :)) to the recording. The reason you don't see the recorded video in there is because the new recordings (that work with screen sharing) is currently only available for public classes. But tomorrow we are updating that so all private classes also get 'built' with the new recording architecture. Besides screen sharing videos showing up, there are other improvements in the new recordings, especially the syncing. We have tried to minimize the sync error to a less than 2 seconds. Please let me know if it isn't like that.
George, you mentioned about a German teacher's class not recorded in sync. Can you tell me if the class was public or private?
And please try checking your (above) recording in 30 mins or so since I asked my team to build it with the new recording program - screen sharing video should show up.
You mentioned screen sharing working through the firewall. Its only the presenter who has to install that Java Applet and not the attendees. For attendees, its just a video stream, just like your web cam video.

Guys,

I watched your recording again, now with the new build - I can see the screen sharing video too.
What I realized is that Ben didn't navigate on his desktop much. Screen sharing is built mainly for the use case where you will minimize your virtual classroom and use your desktop, which will be seen by your attendees. I think the messages in the prompts need to be improved to make it more obvious.
Anyway, take a look at your recording again and let me know what you think.

Harman,

Thank you so much! I am very happy about the new web sharing feature and look forward to using it without too many bugs in the system.

Happy holidays from Dallas, Texas!
Stephanie

Thanks Ben and George for being the first real teacher to test it out :). We would love to hear as much feedback as you can.

Thanks.
Vivek.

A great feature and eagerly awaited by many professionals.

I am now watching the recorded session.
1 As stated in other forums, the ability to start and stop the actual recording would be much appreciated as waiting for actual class to starts seems like an eternity during recorded viewing.
2 Eureka! I've got it....
Several times I have queried the Wiz team about the syncing problems with the recorded viewing. Well, I was dumbfounded by the lack of repeatability of the bad syncing. But tonight I might have found the nasty little bug.
There seems to be three factors involved:
1. When viewing on a slow Internet connection the chances of experiencing the bad syncing is much greater.
2. If I play with the time slider bar (moving ahead or back in recording) seems to accentuate the problem.
3. (This was the missing part of the puzzle) I think that wiziq doesn't truly package the recorded session as one homogeneous video. It appears that there are at least 2 streams of data coming to my computer.
One is the video of the session. Second is the audio of the presenter and possibly third is my audio that was received a half second later at the server. So it may be compiled well enough to be viewed on a fast Internet connection but if there are any issues with the connection the three streams of data cannot be played together because they actually are not tied together beyond a simple start time.

I am sorry that this sounds like I am a raving geek on caffeine but honest, I am not high on coffee. I have found the problem Captain Kirk (Harman) let go down to Engineering and talk to Scotty (Vivek), he'll understand me. It's the Tribbles! (insider Trekkie joke)

Oh, by the way, thanks for the early Christmas present. And the best part is we can give it away to others and it doesn't diminish the value one bit. Quite the opposite! The more we give WIZIQ away the better it gets for all of us!

I tried the new feature last night, did not work very well though. Some of the participants were seeing the video I was sharing pretty good, others weren't. And there was no sound coming, so it must be only screen sharing... I am still trying to figure out the details but it is a great option.

George,

Were you using desktop sharing to show video on a web page? If so, then the experience cannot be good since screen sharing technology is not good for high graphic activities. Screen sharing technology is a very CPU intensive by nature. How it works is that it captures your screen as a raw image (very big in size), encode it in real time and sends each image to the server that transmits them as a series of images to the attendees who see it as a streaming video. Now, more graphics, colors, movement on your screen, more images and each of high quality the program will send. This means:
1. Making your CPU work harder
2. Choking your (or your attendee's) bandwidth

For good experience, I would suggest that you use screen sharing in the following scenarios:
1. When you have to show how some software works say MS Outlook, Word etc.
2. In scenarios where you are training your students on using a programming language e.g. teaching someone to code in the C# language using Visual Studio
3. Browsing a website such as wikipedia, gmail, Moodle etc.

Screen sharing is not recommended for:
1. Visiting Youtube.com and showing a video (our Youtube sharing application in the virtual classroom is designed for this)
2. Visiting Google Maps and changing the maps screen fast (we are building an app for the virtual classroom that you can use to synchronously share Google Maps)
3. Switching between multiple windows quickly on your desktop (you should allow a few seconds of wait when you switch between different Windows applications)

I can ask one of our teacher trainers to do a one to one session with you to discuss and show screen sharing. Please let me know if you are interested.

Always interested, thanks.

I would like to advise all beta testers to check their connection speed here is a very good one:
[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/620161850.png[/IMG][/URL]

Simply go to that site, wait about 5 seconds, you will see a gold star on the world map.
Click on the world map gold star and wait about 1.5 minutes. It will report your upload and download speeds. Ben and I have been experimenting on several bandwidths to try determine minimum criteria for a "good" experience.

Please report the upload and download speeds when you post your good and bad experiences so we can better unerstand the conditions during your test. It would also be nice if your students/attendees checked their up/download also.


Make no mistake about it, this is one great feature launch. Particularly in real-time presentation when both parties have a good connection it ran beautifully. Harman makes a good point that the application was created for specific purposes and cannot be all things to all people.

If you are the type of person who does not have the time or interest to deal with the nuances and hassles attendant with a brand new gadget. You should not push the envelope, rather keep it simple. Only use it for obvious applications and test it with some control groups that can tolerate some problems when they occur.

I appreciate and thank Wiziq for allowing us to play with their new toys. They even seem to lovingly offer help in using it correctly after we are supprised that the butterfly net does not work well as a cricket bat.

PS here is the direct URL for the speed test:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/620161850.png

Thanks George.

It's really helpful. I checked my internet speed here it's 0.22 mbps (download) and 0.25 mbps (upload).
With this speed I could test the desktop sharing comfortably (for non-video windows); needless to say video classes with this speed also go almost flawlessly.

PS:- George, you may use HTML formats to post live links. For help click here

Thanks Kaylan, but truthfully I'm lazy enough that I continue to request WIZIQ gine us that option within this "reply to topic" box.

I just checked out your bio on wiziq. Not sure what you are doing but it sounds very cool. Please let me know when you give a general theories of a Math-Psycho-Wiziq-Avant Guard-Motivator-innovator. It sounds left field but I personally like left field, a lot.

PS Saturday WIZIQ meeting of "My ESL Friends" will probably experiment with desktop sharing. As well as our normal kidding around and sharing. You and anyone else from left field are very welcome.

PPS Thank God they have the spell checker working in the forums again. My spelling is embarrassing. I tell my students it is a way to test their critical eye but I think everyone knows that I am spell checker addicted. Or is that codependent?

George,

Thanks for the complements. I believe, Left-field-thought-process gives the ultimate joy of life!

Hopefully,will see you on Saturday.

BTW, spelling of my name is Kalyan (not Kaylan, as u spelled) [vide - your PPS] lol

@George: Updated version of recording has been released to all private sessions as well yesterday(for sometime it was only for public sessions). Try it out and see the difference. Let us know if you still don't see the difference :).
You are partially correct in your assessment at point 3 but that's in old recording now. Not newer one.
Thanks,
Vivek.

"Screen sharing is not recommended for: 1. Visiting Youtube.com and showing a video (our Youtube sharing application in the virtual classroom is designed for this)..."

@Harman, any plans of extending the video streaming function to include others, say BlipTV, TED Videos, etc.?

And just so I understand, are you planning on keeping the web browsing function that does allow the sharing of any videos even though these videos cannot be seen in the recordings?

If anyone knows of a WiZiQ class scheduled that includes 1) youtube video sharing, 2) web sharing, and 3) desktop sharing, I would love to know about it. This would be a great opportunity for WiZiQ to explain these three functions and to witness how these three functions end up in the recordings.

Here, Here
I agree, The Wiz team arguably would be the most capable.

Just a reminder, the Saturday meeting of "My ESL Friends" will continue to experiment with the Desktop Sharing feature.
http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/202420-My-ESL-Friends-106

The big trick to be revealed this week comes fsrom Sid (at WIZIQ)
The problem: Malicious attendee uses writing controls to disrupt class. Must you take writing controls from all students?
Please watch the last 5-10 minutes of this recent class:
http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/206704-Del-Valle-English-8

The trick to "catch a thief"? Come and see!

@George, do you hear the video of Bush in this class recording?

http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/206704-Del-Valle-English-8

I don't. Why is that?

@Benjamin, just so you know, synchronously showing videos in the classroom (like we do of YouTube) instead of using desktop sharing is a much usable for the attendees and much less resource intensive.

Now, we can integrate any video site that gives a "Player" API similar to YouTubes. YT has two kinds of APIs: data and player. Player is the one where you can actually control the video, through code, like call the video's play, stop and seek functions.
I believe Vimeo doesn't give this kind of an API. Not sure about blip either. Other sites that do give such an API are:
Scribd (we are working with it)
authorSTREAM (soon to come)

Don't:
Slideshare
Vimeo

Since 'player api' is the way to go for all content websites, I believe every major platform will expose it in the times to come. And we can integrate with all such platforms as soon as they are ready.

So last Saturday during the "My ESL Friends" discussion group on WIZIQ we tried screen sharing again. We still had problems but fortunately Sid (Mr Spock) came to the rescue. We deliberately tried to use the screen sharing appropriately but I had given microphone to all parties (about 8 of 12 or so in attendance) thinking that that had no import due to their mic's being muted. Here is Sid's comments and warnings:

George,
I know that you like to get everyone involved in the classroom by passing the audio and video controls to everyone, but that increases the bandwidth requirement at users end. Rather than asking the attendees to mute the microphone, it is recommended to give them control only when they are ready to speak. The screen sharing requires that latency at users end be minimal so that everyone can see it happening in sync. If you are going to use screen sharing, then it is recommended to take back controls from user and only give it to those who will be using them.

Following are latency figures from this class:

UserMaximum Latency
Grace 135 seconds
mamun_khan 24.9 seconds
Zachary_Fan 24 seconds
Benjamin_Stewart 18.7 seconds
Sia_S 17.2 seconds
Marian_Heddesheimer12.3 seconds
A_Momen_Adas 9.65 seconds
Elena_R 9.64 seconds
ashwani9029_Mishra 7.98 seconds
Rohit 6.29 seconds
Anurag_Tewari4.53 seconds
youssef 3.97 seconds
Nikki_Elaine 3.56 seconds
U_K_Wasanthi_Kumari2.17 seconds
Jamie_Roberts 1.56 seconds
Muriel_Raes 1.29 seconds



Regards,
Sid

We also did some additional testing with our group using speedtest.net



Hoping to further troubleshoot and anticipate any problems we also talked about using pingtest.net (see slide above) assuming that a ping to an Indian (Mumbai) server would give another indicator. Sid later infromed me that all of their (wiziq) servers are in the USA, so I guess my ping theory doesn't hold up.

I am slowly coming back to the old KISS addage: "Keep It Simple Stupid"
I am just too excited with all of these great toys Uncle Harman sends our way. Fortunately I don't have to admit that I didn't read the instructions first as it seems we were meant to play hard with them and find our own limits.

This is good to know, George. Thanks for sharing.