Mike Check: One...Two...

Fact #1: Synchronous classroom systems are great.
Fact #2: They are even better when people are able to use them...

I had two problems this week.

Issue #1: I realized that 90% of the user support I have to do with our Elluminate Live pilot involves showing users how to select their microphone and turn up its volume. To solve this problem, I developed a scenario to teach users how to make sure they can use their microphone--without calling me on a Sunday afternoon...

Issue #2: My Breeze Presenter 5 PowerPoint add-on doesn't work on Office 2007. I knew that Articulate could be an alternative, but since I did not have a licence, I decided to try to find another PowerPoint to Flash with voice converter - by the way, I really think that Adobe made a mistake by integrating Adobe Presenter and making it exclusively offered with Adobe Connect webconferencing suite. Anyway, 2 days later, and I resigned myself to download the 2007/Vista beta version of Articulate 5. The good thing is it works just fine.

Here is a link to the result (sorry, it is in French...): http://www.fsa.ulaval.ca/apti/Elluminate/microphones/

I hope it will work well enough to help us have a smooth ride until the end of the summer semester.

I'm Elluminated!

I used Elluminate Live 7.0 for the first time today as an Application Administrator and I have been very impressed with the ease of use of this platform. I have been so irritated with our Breeze Live pilot that it is nothing short of a miracle for me.

Since Université Laval is trying the virtual classroom, I had to copy and paste more than 40 new users. CTRL-C and CTRL-V are two shortcuts you cannot avoid when you work with IT anyway.

We are beginning a pilot with approximately 30 students on Monday. If everything goes as planned, I believe that we will be a step closer to making our decision about our next virtual classroom.