Elluminate Lessons Learned

For those interested, Lauren and I tried to create a short how-to class using Elluminate. It's a very cool tool but there are some things that might be helpful to first time users. Below is our list of Lessons Learned after using Elluminate for the first time. Enjoy!

Michael's Lessons:

1. Elluminate defaults to 1 speaker and video broadcaster at a time. You have to change this in the settings.
2. If you are not going to use a headset, you need to turn the microphone gain down to about 33%. Using a headset helps a lot.
3. Even on a LAN, video quality should be kept low or medium with no more than 2 feeds.
4. Get the presenter in early to get settled. There is always a little adjusting to be done.
5. The number of reserved slots needs to be set high. If people come and go, their reserved slot may not be released.
6. Chrome does not display management features.

Lauren's Lessons:

1. Don't fidget too much.
2. Make sure that the camera is straight ahead instead of at an angle and as far away as possible.  Part of this is making sure that the main screen in a dual screen setup is set to the monitor with the camera and physically moving monitors to accommodate this. 
   
3. Practice using the instructor capabilities a lot before the session.  Can use LearnCentral vRoom for this. 
   
4. Sharing individual applications is much easier than doing a Web Tour or sharing the entire desktop.
   
5. Open as many applications and webpages as you can prior to starting the session, so you are not constantly waiting on the screen to load or having to navigate while talking.
6. The camera is close, so it is not necessary to exaggerate motions or facial expressions as if you were teaching in front of a crowd that is farther away from you.
7. Get more comfortable with silence and talking to yourself as you will not be able to read people's facial expressions and it is not as easy to get verbal feedback.
8. Prepare a lesson plan with examples beforehand.  Pick relevant examples that demand several search strategies and will be successful.
9. Speak slowly and work on transistions from one resource to another. 
10. Make sure to explain everything you want the students to know as you will not be able to easily clarify if someone is confused. 
11. Make sure to use the mouse cursor to highlight different features of applications as viewers cannot see pointing. 
    
12. Try to look up and straight into camera as much as possible.