Title: Communication Page
Course: Web Tools for Courses

This section covers ways for educators to communicate with members of their classes, from web conferencing and skype to polling with cell phones.

Making online resources for your students is not always enough to keep your learners engaged. It's a great idea to provide multiple ways for your students to connect with each other.

- Participants may use SMS text message; Twitter; or the internet to answer your poll questions. Allows you to see real-time results. Free teacher account allows you to poll up to 32 respondents at a time.

- Free online polls without signing up. This one's about as easy as it gets.

- Free internet to internet connection for voice and video calls. Allows for conferencing and desktop sharing; there is an iPhone application, but rumor has it that users will be charged in 2011.

-You can now provide contact information to students without giving out your personal phone number and the messages can be received and used in multiple ways.(Discussed in greater detail in the Google Apps section) You can also send and receive calls in Google Voice through Gmail.

Gmail users can also make video calls using Google Chat.

- This one's a free desktop sharing tool that is free to download and use. It is easy to switch between presenters and is one of the easier desktop sharing applications I've found. The problem is that there is not sound. What's been working well for me lately is to make the call through my Gmail/Google Voice number and start a presentation this way. (I guess if you really wanted to you could use your phone ). Requires download.

-Video conferencing; web cam view; voice; presentation; desktop sharing (Overview). The program must be installed on your own server as well as having the BBB module installed in Moodle. (For your IT department: How to set it up; Moodle Plug-in Download.)

-Host your own show or online event.

- Record the audio and video from an online interview and share the session with others.

- An easy way to send big files up to 2GB. Files are available for two weeks.

-Great way to publish and share files. No size limit!

No web-based content is complete without...THE RSS Feed!

(Click Me)
RSS stands for: Really Simple Syndication. They can be embedded in Moodle fairly easily in a front page block. There are also various readers available (check out Google Reader on the Google Apps section), or they can be sent to your email. Look for that symbol when you want to subscribe to a site's changes and use the feed URL to subscribe via your reader.

The value of an RSS feed is that it adds real time; relevant content to your class and after you set it up, you don't even have to do anything. That's an advantage that a textbook course can't match.

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