IMGconnect

Stacey Powell, a poweruser of Wimba products at Auburn, shares some important information about Voice Boards and Blackboard:

If you have Bb sites with Wimba Voice Boards, please read this message very carefully:

When you copy old Bb sites into Development sites or into your new sites for this semester, please be very careful with the Voice Boards.

Recently, Bb has started behaving a little differently with regards to the Voice Boards.  Instead of having broken links that serve as automatic reminders for you to delete the old links and add new Voice Boards  for the new course, Bb is suddenly just adding a link to your Voice Boards from the older course site.  What this means is that you will see a Voice Board that looks exactly like the one from your previous course with all student postings.  DO NOT DELETE STUDENT POSTINGS FROM THIS BOARD.  If you do, you will be deleting the student postings from the original Voice Board in your older course site.

INSTEAD, MAKE SURE YOU DELETE THE LINK TO THE OLD VOICE BOARDS AND CREATE NEW ONES.  You will have to import any recording prompts that you wish to reuse.

Now, if you have not set up your Spring 2011 sites yet and are planning to take care of that this week, you may not suffer from this problem.

If you see a message that says, “”This section was created with Wimba Voice Tool content from a template or from another section. New blank tools are being created for you for this section. Be sure to re-record any content in these tools” then you are fine and may use the new, empty Voice Boards that are created.

Bottom line:  if you see Voice Board content in your new course that should not be there – do not delete the content.  Instead, delete the Voice Board and start over with a fresh, new Board.

Deleted student Voice Board content cannot be recovered.

Please contact Stacey Powell (powelst) with  any questions.

From Wimba:

The most recent release of Mac OS X release of Java 1.6.0_22 appears to contain a bug that has resulted in issues with entering a Wimba Classroom session.  This affects only users on a Mac OS X who have accepted the newest Java Updates, all other users will continue to access Wimba Classroom without an issues.

After performing Java Update 3 (version 1.6.0_22) on Mac OS X 10.6 or Java Update 8 (version 1.6.0_22) on Mac OS X 10.5, when logging into Wimba Classroom, the browser will not progress pass the initial screen that says, “One moment, please.  Loading…”   To resolve this issue, users should completely exit and restart the browser and access Classroom again.  Normally the browser will allow you to enter Wimba Classroom, but you will experience this problem on any subsequent logins to Wimba Classroom therefore you will have to exit and restart your browser each time you join a Wimba Classroom session.  A patch has been developed that works around this issue.  The patch will be released and rolled out to hosted clients as soon as possible. The patch will be transparent and will not require downtime.  Our goal is to have this patch fully tested and into production before Sunday, November 7th.

We will continue to update our Support Portal with additional information as we obtain it.

From Wimba:

We have received reports and verified that there are intermittent issues with telephone simulcast within Wimba Classroom.  Participants and presenters calling into the Wimba Classroom telephone simulcast may receive a voice prompt stating, “All circuits are busy”.
This issue appears to be intermittent and related to the telecomm services outside the Wimba network.  Please note that Wimba Classroom VOIP audio continues to work properly.
Wimba is working with telecomm providers to determine the specific cause of the issue.
If you receive the error message, please hang up your telephone and try again.
We will follow up with an update on the status of this issue every 24 hours or when we hear of progress on this issue (whichever is first).

Dr. Kimberly Walls

Welcome to the new classroom … but this is not the typical room with four walls and one door. In the Department of Music Education, Wimba Live Classroom is used to teach research methods, music education curriculum, and multimedia production for music instruction. Most music education students lead double lives as students and teachers, and Wimba Live Classroom has become a maestro learning tool within this department. With Live Classroom, professors can be prepared to teach no matter how far away their students are located. So how far are we talking? According to Dr. Walls, Professor of Music Education, most of the music education students are distance learners, tuning in from locales such as Georgia, Texas, Missouri, and even Pennsylvania! Dr. Walls has even been able to teach guitar lessons via Wimba to students sitting right in their living rooms.

Wimba Live Classroom opens up many doors, allowing students and teachers the luxury of rewinding and replaying those memorable moments that will enhance learning and teaching. Using Wimba, Dr. Walls is able to interact with her distant students by seeing them live from their homes through her computer screen and manipulating what they see on their screens. For example, a PowerPoint that she is presenting in her physical classroom at Auburn University can also be seen on the screens of her students at home. This form of learning is ideal for professors who wish to make valuable use of their physical class-time while allowing students the opportunity to learn beyond the classroom.

Dr. Kimberly Walls is a Professor of Music Education and Program Coordinator at Auburn University. Her research interests include the learning styles of graduate students and how effective distance-learning is for them through the various uses of multimedia in music education courses. In the future, Dr. Walls envisions music education courses with more live interaction through mediums such as the Wimba Live Classroom, podcasting, and Adobe Connect, seeing each as a possibility for distance learning.