Press to talk button "Ctrl"

I have raised the issue before, but it just does not go away.
In WIZIQ we have the option to share around a handful of microphones and I am glad that there are not more of them. Not just does a student has to put up with the background noise at his/her place, but also of all the other open microphones, which can make WIZIQ a very loud place. Also as the teacher, you can have a very annoying echo from some student’s computers. This is of course not a WIZIQ problem and the echo can be fixed if you have the time.

The solution is simple, turn of all the microphones, but lessons become rather boring. Dialogs are limited and the old school chalk and talk starts to shine again. To open a microphone for a student just to answer one question appears to be too slow and from my experience, even with my low literacy students, they rather text. They have criticised the background noise from the others and gave this as the reason for their preference to text. My problem of course is that it slows down the class.

In and earlier live, I used a very primitive version of a WIZIQ like program. What worked exceptionally well was the press to talk button. Any student could ask a question by simply press Ctrl. If more than one student pressed Ctrl, it simply put them on a “waiting list”. It was very simple and effective, and yes, I had an option to block a student, however, I can not remember ever to have used that function.

If I had one wish left in my live, it would be a press to talk button for my students …….. may be I should rethink this, but it would be very high on my wish list anyway.