Speaking / Voice chat room -- is there an affordable option?

Hi everyone!

We have an online community, EFL Classroom 2.0, for students and teachers of EFL / ESL (Learners of English). Lots to do there but I am also a big proponent of Voice 2.0 technology and would like to have an integrated voice chat room for members.

Does anyone know of any "affordable" options? I love Elluminate but, it is just too expensive (and I don't think they'll sponsor us, like here, either. ) . Also I think, a little confusing for users. I would like something which just needs a click, you enter and then you check your mic and start speaking. Yackpack used to work but I find it is just too confusing but I might look there again.

what kind of options do you think I should consider. Any help/thoughts appreciated.

David
http://eflclassroom.ning.com

Tags: applications, chat, efl, voice

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Permalink Reply by Eric Endsley on December 7, 2008 at 6:52pm

Have you looked at Google Apps? The offer voice and video chat now built right into the GMail platform. And it is free for Education!

Here's the link. I recommend you watch the video on this page:
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/messaging.html

Cheers,
Eric

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Permalink Reply by Sarah Hanawald on December 8, 2008 at 7:58am

Just yesterday, I was looking at a site called YackPack that someone tweeted out. I am not sure exactly how to use it, but it looks cool and what I really liked were the privacy settings and capacity for closed, invitation only groups that meet COPA requirements. Theres a link for educators on the front page. If it meets your requirements, I'd be really interested in hearing about your experiences.
Sarah

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Permalink Reply by Ellen on December 8, 2008 at 10:38pm

VoiceThread http://www.VoiceThread.com has been a great (easy to use) resource for us!

Good luck,
Ellen

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Permalink Reply by Stefan Richter on January 2, 2009 at 4:46am

Hello David,
I noticed one of the previous posters mentioned Scribblar.com, of which I'm the developer (www.scribblar.com)

One of my clients (a live homework helping site) moved away from Elluminate and replaced it with Scribblar. While my tool may not be as fully featured it is certainly much easier to use than Elluminate and it does what it does well (new features are coming up...). Scribblar is Flash based, which in my opinion makes it much more accessible than the Java based tools.

I'd be very happy to discuss your requirements (and indeed anyone else's) and see how I can help your site. I think that if you are a not-for-profit or charity site then there should be no problem sorting you out with a free Scribblar PRO account. Just drop me a note and we can chat further.

Best wishes,

Stefan

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Permalink Reply by ddeubel on January 2, 2009 at 4:57am

Hi Stephan,

I'll be sending you a note shortly. I've resolved this year to try and get something reliable and substantial enough to meet the needs of our thousands of teachers who would like to start along the online elearning path (for teaching English - probably the fastest growing educational market out there). I've investigated so many things this year but really haven't found anything I believe is intuitive/simple enough for scheduling and general use. Thanks,

David
http://eflclassroom.ning.com

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Permalink Reply by Toll Sam on March 12, 2009 at 6:29am

Thanks to accepting me in your site I hope to be a good learner with your
thanks

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Permalink Reply by Shayla Giles on November 9, 2009 at 1:59pm

I am interested in creating an online classroom for tutoring to be added to my website.
Here is the way I would like for it to be set-up.

A student logs into their account, minutes previously purchased. When they need a tutor they log into their classroom and request a tutor in their subject area and is match to a specific tutor (one-to-one) that will be able to help.

Within the classroom there is needs to be the chat feature, white board, web broswer, document upload, math tools also would be great.

The student will run out of minutes and be given a warning, so they can add minutes.

When the tutoring session is over they will log out and fill out a survey about the session. The student and the admin having a session transcript.

I would like the classroom to be customized to include our logo and name.

This is the basic idea of what I would like it to be like.

Please let me know if you can help me with this.

Thanks

Shayla

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Permalink Reply by Aisha Rees on March 29, 2010 at 9:06am

There is a free web site called Voicethread, where, students with a microphone can send voice messages to a forum that you create. They can also type responses as well, for students who do not have microphones. But then everyone who is signed up for that voicethread can listen to each person's response and create their own. I used it one of my education courses not too long ago, and it worked out wonderfully.