Gentlemen:
I am an online and classroom business instructor with Valencia Community
College in Orlando, Florida. I use WebCT ver. 6 to support my classes.
For online classes, I use the chat program they provide. It includes a
whiteboard and text chat with audio chat a coming feature (someday). I
was wondering if your Draw program in the OpenOffice.org suite could
be ported to use as a whiteboard in conjunction with an audio chat
program such as Ventrilo. Video conferencing would be nice but not
essential. Big issue with WebCT is the text only chat. Neither myself or
my students are typically particularly rapid keyboard users so responses
to comments and questions are quite slow and wasteful of the time
available. The ability to audio chat and use the whiteboard to show
examples would help speed up the process and also enhance the "social"
benefits as students would feel more attachment to the class which
improves the chance of success for them. The ability to record the
session as it progresses would also provide access to the information
presented for review or for someone unable to attend a class session.
Obviously, cost to students is a factor. They are already spending $100
or more for text books so asking them to pony up for commercial
conferencing programs is not desirable. As an aside, I have been
recommending that my students consider your office suite as I am really
impressed with the powerful features it provides and the cost of
commercial software can be a problem for some of them.
Perhaps there are programs in the open source repertoire that I am
unaware of that would handle this task. My efforts on the various
search engines haven't come up with anything that seems to provide the
features I am looking for.. Suggestions or recommendations would be
greatly appreciated.
Please note that I am not speaking for the College as I have no
authority to do so. However, I am not reluctant to hound the
administration to adopt something that meets my needs. I started the
first online class at the College in 1996 when 56k modems were
considered fast. Then as now, the College in my opinion, is way behind
using the technology available.
Russ Edwards
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