With the free online tool Wiziq I have scheduled a session on the personal benefits of social media for researchers. Wiziq is hot, so try it out!
If you are interested, feel free to join me on Thursday 14th February 2008 at 14.00 PM (GMT +1 = Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin) . Language: English (with Flemish accent).
This session is based on a face to face presentation that I gave at ITM earlier this month. On the feedback I got from the attending researchers I have adjusted my presentation a bit to get it more taylored to their needs.
The reason I organised this session was because some researchers at ITM where doubtful of the benefits of social media. This doubt kept them from jumping in. After the face-to-face sessions people got talking and now social media is taking off within ITM's researchers.
What you have to do if you want to attend: register (username and password) and then you have access to all the sessions.
Wiziq is a very easy to use tool for online sessions that enables audio and video (if you want to), has a whiteboard and a content section where the speaker or the participants can draw up or scroll through information (including powerpoints etcetera). The tool is userfriendly and it seems to function well. You can add text, highlight a selection, add images, encircle words ... on the whiteboard. There is a chat available as well. Unlike Elluminate, you cannot raise hands or more of those interactive features for participants, but you can give the floor to participants.
And straight from the press: wiziq can now be added to Moodle.
It is (still) free, betaversion and ... it has potential. Just look at some of the archived sessions for cool international exchange of content.
If you like an indepth review of Wiziq I recommend the blogpost of Vance Stevens.
There is a nice review here from the Teaching college math technology blog. While at their point in time they had trouble loading up content, my content uploaded immediately. Wiziq has a blog with feedback and stories on their development.
Let me know if you want to join, I can immediately add you to the participants list. If you want to help me in moderating everything that is going on, you are more then welcome, it will also enhance the quality of interactivity.
Or if you have any questions about the forthcoming session, ask, I will be more then happy to answer.
Ignatia, this is fantastic. I'll add the details to the SCoPE calendar http://scope.lidc.sfu.ca and newsletter. I'm sure many members will be interested in this one!
ReplyDeleteSylvia
hi Sylvie
ReplyDeletethat is great! Thank you for putting the session on the SCoPe agenda.
take care
Hello Ignatia,
ReplyDeleteWell, I do have a Wiziq account, but I cannot find your session when I search for it. It's not mentioned in the list of upcoming public sessions?
hello Willem
ReplyDeleteIndeed it is not in the list of upcoming public sessions, because Wiziq only allows a limited amount of Wiziq-selected teachers to schedule public sessions.
If you want to join the session I am going to give, you can surf to this place.
Hi Ignatia,
ReplyDeleteThanks for making a link to my blog post on WiZiQ. How are your recordings for your sessions coming out? Here is one we made http://tinyurl.com/2xmdux The time lag was really apparent in this recording, and I wonder if other people are producing similar recordings. Any comments? Vance
hi Vance
ReplyDeletethank you for your link, I will gladly have a look and come back at you if I have any thoughts.
cheers
Ignatia, this sounds very interesting. Could you provide some more information about the content? How long will the session take?
ReplyDelete14:00 GMT+1 is 21:00 in China, so I still have to decide about participating or not...
hi Carsten
ReplyDeleteThe presentation will take about 35minutes (depending on the feedback of users during the session).
The aim of this session is to give researchers an idea of what is out there and how they might implement social media as an asset to their (and the communities) research.
Brief scenario
• what is social media (history of communication past, now, future and linking it to history of human/researcher communication)
• open closed research (linked to wisdom of crowds)
• examples of different social media functions starting from 1 purpose social media (flickr, del.icio.us) to a combination (article sharing, research collaboration, community and network strengthening up to getting random people involved to provide data for research - crowdsourcing)
• problems that could arise
(most of the examples will be health based because of the interest at my institution, but they will give an idea of what is out there)
I hope this gives you an idea? If you have any questions, I will be glad to answer them.
While this post is little bit older than my experience, I still feel the importance of sharing my idea on using WiZiQ. I also using another online virtual rooms besides WiZiQ. One of the tool is now gone.
ReplyDeleteBecause I am only a graduate student, I couldn't have the pay version online room. However, I need this room for my research collaboration works. Moreover, because I am assisting a student as a Teaching assistant, I need an online virtual room for my virtual office.
In my opinion, Free version of WiZiQ lends me a hand on:
1. having a public class.
2. having an virtual offices.
3. maintaining the content of material that I want to share
4. connecting with people from all over the world.
What I am still waiting from WiZiQ is the improvement on an ability to share application and showing a presentation of dynamic URL when I am doing my presentation. When I registered for the free version, this features was working, but it not save on the recording. Currently, I do not see this feature anymore on the free version.