Wormbog

I had the chance over the last couple of days to attend a meeting in Orlando, FL with several other Christian schools to discuss J-Term (January Term or Winterim) and how the 15-20 schools that have this opportunity for their students can work together.  One of the common issues that arose from the meeting was the question of how we could continue to communicate after this face-to-face meeting.

There are, of course, several options for to keep communication lines open from a distance.  The most basic is the conference call.  Most phone systems have the ability to conference in at least 2-3 people without any special arrangements.  You can also Google conference call and find that there is an ubudance of solutions.  I’ve never used any of these so I do not have any recommendations.

Another option is a company called Webex.  They are often the company that is used to host webinars and they do a great job.  My experience with them has been in sharing a computer desktop which can work for software presentation, sales meetings or PowerPoint presentations.  You do not see the presenter but you are able to see their desktop.  Webex also allows streaming of up to 6 webcam sessions which allows you to video conference with 5 other participants. Webex offers a free trial but costs about $50/month.

Apple’s iChat also does a very nice job of video conferencing for up to 4 people. This requires that all users have a Mac.

I have been searching for a solution that will allow 15-20 users to connect to a video conference but have not found one.  I can imagine that it would be difficult to do well.  I can’t imagine the bandwidth requirements necessary to make that work well.  In my experience even a single video stream can get jumpy.  If you have experience with a video conference solution for a larger number of users let us know in the comments.