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Online Teaching : The e-Teaching Community

Created on: 02 July, 2009 Members: 33099 | Community Link: http://e-teaching.wiziq.com

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Technical problems

by Malgosia Askanas
Posted on 24 January, 2010

I am having the following technical problems with WizIQ:

(1) Even though I have only been using it to teach one-on-one, almost invariably, several times during every session, either my screen or my student's screen freezes, the browser stops responding and has to be force-quit and restarted. Perhaps this is caused by fluctuations in connectivity, but if it is, it is a very extreme reaction to such fluctuations on the part of WizIQ. I cannot even imagine teaching a larger group under those circumstances.

(2) I was listening in on a public class today. After the first few minutes, I lost sound. I re-entered the class several times, and every time I would regain the sound for about a minute, and then it would stop again. There is nothing wrong with my sound system, and the WizIQ sound test worked just fine. Again, perhaps it is due to connectivity fluctuations.

Does anybody else have these problems? Is there any remedy?

by Malgosia Askanas posted on 25 January, 2010

Well, speedtest.net says my download speed is 3.28 mbps. But this is a somewhat useless test, since obviously my speed is good enough to use WizIQ for stretches of time. I think what I am experiencing is WizIQ's extreme intolerance to _fluctuations_ in connection speed. So if, for example, my ISP (or my student's) does bandwidth throttling and one of us gets a sudden connection-speed low, the WizIQ interface causes the browser to freeze and to have to be restarted. As opposed to, for example, redrawing the screen as soon as the connection normalizes again, and permitting the session to continue.

OK, I'll contact Sid. Thanks.

by Malgosia Askanas posted on 25 January, 2010

The issue occurs in almost every session that I teach using WizIQ, and seems to occur independently of whether the student is using a Mac (as am I), or a Windows system. This is why in my tutoring work, whenever possible, I prefer to use Coccinella (a Jabber-based whiteboard which behaves considerably more robustly) than WizIQ.

I haven't attended enough classes to be able to comment on the frequency of the problems with attending. I haven't noticed any of these problems in playing back the recorded classes, by the way.

I just updated to the latest Flash Player (on Marian Heddesheimer's suggestion), but that seems to be version 10,0,42,34. Are you suggesting that I just made matters worse and should try to go back to 10,0,22,87? I am not sure my present WizIQ student, assuming that his Mac is kept up to date, would go for a downgrade on his Mac.

by Marian Heddesheimer posted on 25 January, 2010

I found that I sometimes loose sound on my iMac when I open another web page while listening. The systems runs much more stable on windows, so I often use WizIQ on a windows machine. Also make sure you have the latest Flash plugin installed that you can get from adobe.com

hope that helps
Marian

by George Machlan posted on 25 January, 2010

sounds like your connection speed
250kbps for audio only class
500kbps (0.5mbps) video class

here is a good site to test your speed
www.speedtest.net

here is a slide tutorial

please contact Sid at WIZIQ, he is remarkable at diagnosing problems

by Sid posted on 25 January, 2010

Malgosia we will check your last few classes and let you the reasons for these issues. I have noticed that you are teaching this one particular student only.

Is the issue occurring in the sessions with this student or every session that you attend or teach.

If anyone is facing issues on MAC system, please install Flash Player version 10,0,22,87 on their system. That version of flash player is more stable for MAC users while using virtual classroom.