I Have Been Elluminated!

Hi,
I have been elluminated! This week I decided to check out Elluminate Live! software this week. This is my review of this software:

ADVANTAGES
*it's free
*it is available through the University of Saskatchewan so technical support is only a phone call or email away
*it has a white board so you can post agendas, word documents or entire power point presentations
*it has a cool feature that allows other to raise their hand so one person can't monopolize the conversation
*it has cool little things like a happy face you can click on when you are happy and a confused face that you can also click on when you don't understand what the speaker is talking about
*what is really neat too is that people can join the session and features are available to type in your responses if you don't have a microphone and/or videocamera
*the EASIEST thing is that I could set up the meeting and simply email the link to anybody that wants to join it
*a nice feature is that the whiteboard automatically erases the whiteboard when you are done
*if you want to, you can also videotape the session which is nice for doing up notes

DISADVANTAGES
*it takes a lot of time for the technical support person to walk the moderator through all these features
*I had trouble with actually getting my agenda to show up on the screen --> any other windows I had open tended to cast a shadow or get in the way so others couldn't see it --> I haven't quite figured this problem out yet and how to fix it
*it isn't very intuitive --> I thought it would be a breeze to attach the agenda but it was quite tricky even after the tech person explained it
*it does take a small amount of effort to get viewers set up to join the session including them clicking on boxes to allow the software to download and remembering to pick LAN for the university network

All in all, it wasn't as bad as I expected to use and with a helpful IT person available I don't think you could go wrong trying out this software to facilitate online collaborations. Why don't you check it out and get Elluminated today!

Karen