Further communication pilot discussion area
Feel free to discuss ideas for this pilot in this space. These ideas can be formalised before moving them into the pilot template on the previous page - this discussion area is also the place to agree or disagree with peoples thoughts, but don't forget to add a reason as to why you agree or disagree!
Don't feel you have to stick to the titles below, let your imagination go wild...
There is a Skype plugin for Moodle which shows when people are online or not. In order for this to work users must have version 2.0 or above of Skype, they must have turned on 'Show my web presence' in the Skype settings and they need to register their Skype ID in their profile.
One complication in this - looking at the survey results - is that only 33 of the 80 people (41%) responding to the survey have said they have a microphone/speakers on their PC/Laptop [compared to 52% from the initial survey] and only 12 (15%) have indicated that they currently have a profile in Skype [this question wasn't in the original survey].
Old discussion about issues http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=33259
Skype presence box http://docs.moodle.org/en/Skype_presence_block
A. Basic information
(Comments added - Matt 01/02/08)
My thoughts about what we should be looking at when choosing a communication tool to use:
- no download required
- no account required
- easy interface
- audio required
- text chat
- video - optional
In addition to this the software has to integrate into Moodle.
B. Detailed description
One of the largest stumbling blocks while looking at all of these solutions is how to alert that you would like a chat session - whether it is text or audio/video. It would be relatively straightforward to add instructions on how users can setup and run their sessions, however, there is no good way for individuals to make immediate contact with other members of their course.
Doing a quick search for tools produces, as most people could guess a huge list. In order to reduce this I firstly went through those with representation on the Web 2.0 directory. Following on from that I did a quick search looking for further examples. Below is a quick review of those that I have looked at and the main advantages and disadvantages of each.
DimDim
DimDim? is an open source webmeeting package, which now has a plugin for Moodle. It provides the following tools:
- Desktop sharing
- Audio
- Presenter video
- Whiteboard
- Attendees don't need to login - just add the room name and a screen name
DimDim? is currently in Beta release - they claim to have a hosted solution as well as a download version, but it took a few weeks and some proding to get a login setup to try it! While I think this is quite a good meeting tool it is still very early on, without much evidence of things changing. All in all I think it is too complex for what we are looking for and will probably turn people off.
MessengerFX.com
Free to use webservie, with no downloads, that allows users to login with the MSN details. It is a very basic interface, without audio or video support and the group chat wasn't great! The final straw was when FireFox? kept crashing everytime I tried to run it...
FlashMeeting
This is an online meeting package created by the Open University, looks good claims:
- Don't need to have an account, but get additional features if do
- Supports audio and two-way video
- Whiteboard
- Group and private chat
All seems good with this, but after 3 days I don't have a login to be able to host a meeting[[BR]]
I discovered what I'd done wrong, you need to register first and then ask to be upgraded to be able to host a meeting! OU didn't tell me this, I took another look and found it in the help section. The product looks very good, but every student would have to apply to be upgraded to be able to host their own meeting. There maybe some way we could have our students automatically upgraded if we worked with the OU, but I don't think we have time to be able to do this.
AirTalkr2007 Beta
Free to use webservice, but again need login - this is just an online version of MSN with additional features of collating Social Network information on your contacts. The user does need Adobe AIR runtime on their machine if the user wants to use the download version. It doesn't have audio or video.
Zoho chat
Hosted solution providing simple chat facilities with the addition of being able to group contacts and invite all contacts to a session.
- Users don't have to be registered to use the chat, but do to be/have contacts.
- No Audio - no plans to add it
- No plugins
- Can save the transcript (couldn't get this to work, wondered if it's because users didn't sign-in only as invitee)
- Links in with other zoho products
Has a very clean/casual environment - no gimics - can't really go wrong.
Zoho meeting
Free hosted solution providing the following:
- Desktop sharing (along with documents, pdf's, excel, etc)
- Participants can 'take control' of desktop - including editing and saving your documents
- No audio or video, but there are plans to add audio early this year
- Does integrate with skype
- Requires flash, Active-X or Java, depending on how the participant connects
- No login required - runs from a URL, users add a screenname
This is a powerful application, but I think too much for our audience and a little too immature as there are still bugs in it - if I switch on desktop sharing and join the meeting (when registered as presenter) it goes recursive!
MeBeam
Not sure if open source, but they have released an API to allow developers to add functionality.
- Very basic interface
- No-one (including presenter) needs a login
- Enter room name and press go
- Others click URL and enter screen name
- ALLOWS text chat, audio and video
- Appears to be downloadable to host on server
- No admin features for tailoring - but does give advice how to change colours, etc. in download version
- Limit on numbers to 18 (including self) - not sure if this is just online or in download version too
This is a great little tool, it is very basic and clean, but allows us to do everything we need. It seems to be developed by a single guy, with someone else helping out on the forums - on which there are 570 people registered.
My suggestion would be to investigate MeBeam? further - either by contacting them or simply via the forums - to explain what we are trying to do needs defining to get an better understanding of it's workings, etc. I don't think we would have to do any development work, except maybe some interface tailoring and looking at ways to integrate it with course/Moodle - which we will need to look at anyway.
Upon further investigation MeBeam? is still very much in Beta, without necessary security. It is possible for anyone to join your room and to do whatever they so wish in front of their webcam! In addition to this they are having a number of issues with access and sound from people testing the software - coupled with a single developer working on the code it takes a while to get things updated.
Google Talk
- Google's clients aren't open source software, but use open protocols and are gratis to use; open source clients and servers are available.
- Requires Google account (we could run a server and provide students with accounts automatically)
- Supports IM, Group chat, Presence, VOIP
- Web client
- No download required
- no VOIP
- IM chat
- Media previews (YouTube, Flickr, etc.)
- Desktop clients
- Many available - most free
- Pre-installed on Linux & Mac, otherwise a download is required
- Only Google's Windows client currently supports VOIP
- File transfer
- IM & VOIP chat to offline users will store the messages until they log in - i.e. (voice)mail box
- Video is possible, but not apparent in the Google client
- Integrated with Gmail accounts
- Open protocols:
- Jabber/XMPP
- Has open source client/server implementations
- Gateways/Open? federation allows access to other IM networks (e.g. MSN, AIM) via one IM service (not sure if group chat works through gateways)
- Supports IM, VOIP, File transfer, prioritised multiple locations (e.g. Work > Home > Mobile > IM->SMS text message, gateways to telephone systems
- Jabber/XMPP
- Other interesting features:
This looks like it has a lot of potential, but probably not ideal for the pilots: the current implementation lacks video, and not all features are available without Google's Windows client download.
XMPP is gaining momentumn (Google, iChat, AOL), so may be worth keeping an eye on.
The Covcell Project
This is an exciting project that has done a lot of work to provide text/audio/video chat from the presence block within Moodle. All of their tools are fully integrated with Moodle and while they are in Beta they appear to work! We need to install and give these a go...
This solution provides it's own Presence block which allows students to contact each other immediately to request a chat.
I have installed this on hamster moodle and the Present User block works very nicely, updating itself whenever someone logs into Moodle - no need to refresh my browser.
The following steps were followed to set the covcell system up:
- Check PHP (both of these are default in PHP 5.2):
- JSON support must be installed
- fopen_url_wrapper must be enabled
- Install JAVA - we used Sun 5.0
- Install red5 streaming server & start it
- Add the Covcell Presence Block into moodle
- Add the Moodle chat extension
- Presence block can be activated on a per course basis
More information about the problems we faced during the installations can be found on the Moodle.org forums.
