[Yr7-10it] RE: Rural PD project...so it GROWS!

[Tony Forster]

The video conferencing tool Macromedia Breeze is well worth considering for rural PD. I know it is expensive but can't put a dollar figure on it. But PD is expensive anyway, a PD with 15 participants attending, each paying $150 brings in $2250.

You can get an idea of its functions by looking at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobatconnectpro/?ogn=EN_US-gntray_sol_web_conferencing and clicking on "see the demo", it takes a while to load.

It allows the presenter and the participants to share their computer screens, so for example if teaching Game Maker, the teacher could code a program infront of participants and run it. Meanwhile participants could code on their PC's. If their program that they are coding crashed they could use the audioconferencing to ask questions and even share their desktop to show their code.

I have used this conference tool a number of times and it really is the best way to run remote PD, I just dont know how much you would have to charge for PD registrations to cover the costs.

You could try to run the poor man's version using a free audio tool like skype. Skype will support 5 people, or skype conference a larger number, but only audio and text chat. The presenter could share a powerpoint by email and talk to that powerpoint, "I am now looking at slide 2", participants could discuss in the text chat window or talk on the audio. I could see it working quite well for a presentation but not for hands on PD.

I would be happy to present a PD on game programming using Macromedia Breeze if we can make the dollars part work out.
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