Online Workshop Two
Groupboard
This is another option to use on your web site and it is
free.
http://www.groupboard.com/
Cost: free - click
here to set up a free board
A Case Study
Why I think Groupboard is a good choice for our Online Language School
 About
my background
About three years ago I founded
my own online language school – Advanced-Schooling.
We are based in Bitburg, Germany, a place close to Luxembourg and known for good
beer.
I hold a TEFL – Certificate, develop language courses and teach also online.
I am a PHP/MySQL programmer with background knowledge about JAVA and Flash.
Also, I'd like to mention that I’m not in any way affiliated with www.groupboard.com
. I’m a regular customer using the 9.99$/month hosted Groupboard solution and
this is the product I’m refering to.
Why the conclusion?
I've tried so far the following
solutions: Netmeeting, Windows Messenger, MSN Messenger, Webtrain Communicator
3.5, GRC Live, Groupboard and… many more.
The solution for my online language school right now is Groupboard combined with
Skype. Why?
It is reliable.
There is nothing more nerve-wrecking for an online teacher, online school owner
or online student than constant problems with the download, installation, sound,
whiteboard or video of a Virtual Classroom. Groupboard is applet based. It is
obviously based on the JDK 1.0 or 1.1 and therefore works with most web browsers
and platforms. Since it runs within the web browser there is no software
download + installation necessary.
It is secure.
Have you ever thought about what might happen if your student accuses your
school that your software has messed up or destroyed his computer? A JAVA applet
cannot use the users hard disk or local file system. It works within the Java
Runtime Environment.
It is not confusing.
You think, that the Groupboard interface looks too simple? Especially the
Version without JavaScript? Do you really think this is a disadvantage when
teaching students live? Not at all! I want the student to learn a foreign
language and not the deeper secrets and functions of my virtual classroom. There
is nothing interesting to see except my slide on the whiteboard with a new
grammar exercise, for instance. This is what my student should focus on and
nothing else. The fewer buttons the better. Just imagine you teach somebody with
very little English skills French and now you want to tell him that he should
please click on the fifth button at the left column.
It is easy to find.
Believe it or not. Finding their teacher
online in the internet is one of the main problems for online students. With the
Groupboard + Skype combo you can start with Skype text chat, sent the students a
web link - and that's it. The only thing they have to do is to be online and
wait (and click on the link of course).
It uses very little bandwidth.
The bandwidth Groupboard doesn’t use can be used for Skype. Together with
Skype I have everything I need – clear sound quality, conference calls with up
to five participants, text chat and sooner or later video.
It is a very economical
solution.
Do student and companies look at the price of your courses? Of course they do!
Lets compare a price per minute /
participant model with the Groupboard flat rate pricing.
Just imagine you have 80 student sessions per month and the solutions rate is 3
Euro per participant per hour. We always have 2 students present per session and
each session runs 90 minutes.
This is gives us for this pricing model: 80 x
2 x 1.5 x 3 = 720 Euro per month.
Groupboards pricing for the same capacity (with some VAT) =
11.xy Euro flat rate!
PC to PC Skype connections are without cost, as we all know.
It is international.
Many Collaboration tools were obviously created for business usage - not
necessarily having a language school in mind. Therefore the language in the
virtual rooms is usually English. With Groupboard you have the choice between
ten different languages, including German, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic
and more.
This is ideal for our costumers. Let's say a person from Spain wants to learn
German. It would be nice if he or she could speak English as well. What if not?
Actually you need to explain the meaning of the different English button labels.
With Groupboard I simply switch to Spanish and everybody is happy.
It is very adjustable.
Groupboard is a JAVA applet. Groupboard.com gives their customers enough
information about the individual applet parameters. These parameters are for
instance very interesting for a PHP/MySQL developer. I built an extra Admin page
for my Groupboard and saved the settings in an MySQL table. For a web developer
this should be a very easy task. With that I can adjust all the JAVA applet
parameters to the needs of my individual students and save them. This includes
the language of the Groupboard, the size, the background color and the user
rights.
We are also in the middle of developing a new "Lesson -
Availability+Booking Modul" which will fit seamlessly to Groupboard.
Reasons enough to use and recommend it!
Andreas Neuber,
Founder of Advanced-Schooling –
September 2005
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