Illuminate What?

What is Elluminate and how does it enable Open University students to communicate?

In the words of the manufacturer;

Elluminate is a virtual environment optimized for learning. Whether you have two students—or two hundred—Elluminate enables world-class communication, collaboration, and education that transforms teaching and learning.

It enables the synchronous transmission of speech within a classroom environment, the moderator is able to display a presentation and talk at the same time to a groups of students. Students can either talk in conference mode or type in the chat interface. Students can put up their hands or use smiley's to indicate confusion or request clarification.




The above screen shot gives some indication of the screen.

Recorded demonstrations can be viewed from the following link.
http://www.elluminate.com/demo/recorded_demos_list.jsp

It is also free for personal use the only limitation is that only three users can be in the conference at any one time. A particularly useful feature is the ability to share the desktop with viewers and communicate which has many benefits.

It does rely on good connection speeds though therefore the faster your internet connection the better the experience.

The Open University uses elluminate within a number of courses and tutors have access to the software from within the course framework as expected online support is available on its use from the following link http://www.open.ac.uk/pc4study/communicating/using-elluminate.php

References
Elluminate(2010), 'Where bright ideas meet', (online) Available from: http://www.elluminate.com

Open University (2010), 'PC4Study, Using Elluminate', (online) available from:
http://www.open.ac.uk/pc4study/communicating/using-elluminate.php Accessed January 2010.