Comes yet another enterprise promising the world... at no cost if you have a .edu email address.
This one is sure to be a stinker since it has as partners (how come?) with blackboard and moodle, two systems that require massive tech support to operate marginally.
I will try yet again, but not right away. I am enjoying my summer, and don't want to wreck it by having another bad experience brought to education by angel investors.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
Create, manage, & deliver courses online. Use the WizIQ Virtual Classroom to deliver live classes to any number of students, online.My skepticism comes from more than 20 years of listening, testing, etc on promises. The challenge is in no instance do the people who develop the offerings have any sense of what teachers want or need. These platforms are what investors want, loaded up with junky, counterproductive patent-rich clunk-fests that make me sorry that yet again, I tried the offering out.
This one is sure to be a stinker since it has as partners (how come?) with blackboard and moodle, two systems that require massive tech support to operate marginally.
I do a bit of teaching online, so I keep up with the ever expanding universe of means to deliver content. Two of the most admired online webinar systems, citrix and webex, I find abominable. I still use the ancient IRC for the live sessions, since the most modern delivery methods, for some reason, are relentlessly unproductive
I mean relentlessly because every upgrade does not make it workable for a wider group, it makes it workable for a smaller group.
I have a 3 year old mac v 10.5.8 which cannot host those systems. Both swear they have plug-ins, but not that I can get to work. My year old 10.7.5 will host it, both, but why cut out 90% of the market?
I was in a Nuance voice recognition software online webinar, and the opening was a technical disaster and the presenter was under much stress from that opening. Several times the webex system has gone down. I wonder to myself how this can be tolerated? 50 minutes into the presentation they were still having technical difficulties.
Well, because their main users do not care.
1. Their #1 customers are govt and big biz. (opening target makes that clear...) The content of the seminars is pointless, so it does not really matter if it gets delivered or not.
2. Big biz and big govt spend their "use it or lose it" budgets on brand new equipment, so these platforms compliment the people who waste money and time with features that workable only on the newest systems.
I have noticed a pattern, the more Indian engineers are involved, the more difficult the system, and the more subsidized the market is targeted. They seem to subscribe to the Bill Gates school of thought, that one is guaranteed to become a billionaire if you write lousy code that forces users to be your development team, and captive "could care less" users. I yearn for the day Indian coders reject this failed ethic, and get to writing clean, easy code. This is not to pick on Indian engineers, for it was Gates who pioneered the failed technique. It is only to recognize we are denied the good of Indian genius.
Also, giving away memberships to .edu people is a back door marketing technique. Why not develop something that can be sold through the front door?
Real productive people cannot buy the brand new always, don't want to anyway, so we are not able to access the junky clunk-fest systems on offer.
Google hangout is difficult with no method for effective feedback and change.
I will try yet again, but not right away. I am enjoying my summer, and don't want to wreck it by having another bad experience brought to education by angel investors.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
