webqem blog

http://usc.edu.au/University/MediaPublications/News/MoreNews/GayleBeijing.htm

University of the Sunshine Coast business lecturer Gayle Mayes used Adobe Connect to bring the Beijing Olympics into her classroom.

Ms Mayes spent two weeks in Beijing for the Olympic Games, and organised live video links with her Sport and Event Marketing classes during their scheduled lecture times, covering the sports marketing topics discussed in her University classes.

Issues included ticket prices, politics and sport, drugs in sport, security, the cultural, economic, political and environmental impacts of mega events, and the challenges of marketing and managing an international event in China.

Ms Mayes uses experiential education as her main teaching strategy. This approach last year earned her a $10,000 grant from the Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education.

Adobe Connect Meeting is giving students greater opportunities at Massey University Library to access research consultations with subject librarians.

One hour face-to-face appointments, normally required for this process, had often proved difficult in the past. Connect Meeting means that these can now be done virtually, freeing up travel time for all involved.

The ability to screen share during a Connect Meeting has enabled library staff to operate software on student’s computers remotely if required.

More information about how Massey University uses Adobe Acrobat Connect Meeting within their library can be found online at http://elearning.massey.ac.nz/connect/use/massey_university_library.html.

The role of technology in linking students together is discussed today in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, where Adobe Connect Professional is mentioned as one of the ways that teachers and students can collaborate online.

Adobe’s John Treloar, well known to educators here in Australia, is one of the people quoted in the article that covers how a variety of different technologies are being used to engage students online.

Using Adobe Connect to involve students in a collaborative environment rather than a passive one-to-many online seminar means that the learning process is more engaging - that the student has the ability to contribute and to be part of the learning experience.

Read more in the Sydney Morning Herald article entitled “Dial-up duxes”.

Royal Philips Electronics have introduced Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional as a part of their training strategy. Connect’s Training and Meeting modules are being used to deliver training, video conferencing and web seminars to a potential audience of 135,000 registered users of its Healthcare Learning Management System.

Philips has integrated Connect into their in-house SCORM-compliant Learning Management System, using it as part of their healthcare education programs globally.

Additional information is available online from this press release.

The release of Service Pack 3 for Adobe Acrobat Connect has meant a visible improvement in performance partly made possible by the required use of Flash Player 8.

Flash Player 8 has better video compression algorithms (codecs), which are being utilised in this update to Connect for improved quality screen sharing during live meetings.

Another benefit is that Flash video files (FLVs) compressed with the Flash 8 codec are now better performers when served up as content from the Adobe Acrobat Connect server. Connect can stream FLV files, detecting user connection speeds and optimising performance on the fly, with better quality visuals coming as a result of the codecs used for Flash 8.

While there are a number of applications available for compressing video into the FLV format the majority, especially the freeware and shareware variety, are still only using Flash 7 compression. Adobe ship a Flash Video Encoder with Flash CS3.

If you’re  a power user of both Outlook and Adobe Acrobat Connect Meetings, you might be interested to know that there’s a free add-in for Outlook that will allow you to schedule a Connect Meeting with associates directly.  It can be used to select a room from the available Meetings on your Connect server and view the schedules for invitees if you belong to the same Exchange server - it is compatible with current versions of Outlook up to Outlook 2007.

The latest version of the Acrobat Connect add-in for Microsoft Outlook can be downloaded from http://www.adobe.com/support/connect/updaters.html#outlook

An online tutorial is available from the Adobe site, titled “Using the Breeze Add-in for Microsoft Outlook” it can be found at http://brc.breezecentral.com/usingoutlookaddin/

Adobe have released a public beta of the next version of Adobe Acrobat Connect. Code named “Brio”, the beta is both a web meeting and a online collaboration tool based on the Flash Player intended for small business and individuals. The Brio beta can be evaluated online for free, applying for a Brio meeting gives users the opportunity to:

• Host unlimited online meetings with a maximum of 3 participants using:
  • Screen sharing
  • Chat
  • Camera and VoIP
  • Whiteboards
• Share documents and files with participants
• Have a personal Brio meeting URL

Beta means that Brio is still in development. It currently doesn’t offer the same meeting feature list as Connect but is still worth trying out as you’ll find that it is already a good performer - and a good insight into the future of Adobe Acrobat Connect. Apply for a free Brio account now at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/brio/

Tests last week at webqem resulted in a live video feed from a TV tuner card streaming within an Adobe Acrobat Connect Meeting Room’s Camera pod. The implication for folk hosting Connect online meetings is the possibility of being able to display video material directly from either a DVD or VCR. Want to know more? Contact us via the comments section below.

The Event module for Adobe Connect allows you to track Event registrations by campaign URL, giving you the ability to determine campaign effectiveness through analysing the sources of your registrations.

When managing an event you select the “Enable Campaign Tracking” option from the Registration Questions page to activate this option, then locate the URL for the registration page.

Copy the URL and modify the address, adding “?campaign-id=” to the end with an additional unique identifier and use that new URL in any correspondence you use for the campaign’s registration pages.

This process is explained in further detail in an Adobe TechNote: http://www.adobe.com/go/c886a790