I have been offering a monthly webinar class through Edufire that introduces Moodle & applications for its tools. The turnout has been awesome, with 99 enrolled (the maximum allowed) in my first class, and 85 in the second. I'm very appreciative of the incredible feedback I've been getting in the form of Edufire comments on the course (nice feature, Edufire!), and I'm enjoying the challenging of making this class even better each time. 

My next one is on a Sunday morning the first week of May. You can enroll at this link. I've been having a great time teaching with Edufire and am getting better with the tricks of handling a webinar course with their platform, Adobe Connect. I am looking forward to the free Adobe eSeminar on Secrets of Webinar Production & Management. There's another in May titled Making your Webinars as Engaging as In-Person events. I will be sure to recap my takeaways here. Register here: http://tinyurl.com/adobewebinars

Web Conferencing Systems: I find all the intricacies & differences between webinar platforms interesting - so far I've worked with WebEx, Adobe Connect, and DimDim and have participated in sessions with Elluminate & Wimba. While the ultimate features are very similar, certain administrative tasks can be very different. For instance, managing roles & microphone rights in WebEx is very smooth & easy to work with, and one can view the chat room while screensharing. I haven't looked into this deeply, but I did not see an apparent way to screenshare and show a presentation at the same time. Adobe Connect's roles are a bit more confusing yet their blocks interface allows you to easily set up a slideshow & application share. However, during my second Moodle class session, the full screen button for my application share which I had grown so comfortable using was disappearing & failing to work. This caused a bit of a bumpy ride, but I now have a clearer strategy of handling the interface if this happens again.

Moodle Tip: Every one of the webinar systems above has an integration of some sort with Moodle, and a free one is available so you should be seriously considering the use of a live web meeting system to enrich your online & face-to-face courses.  These integrations typically offer the ability to create, schedule, and access the web meeting - with connections to Moodle's calendar and gradebook.  I will be writing more on strategies & practices for employing webinar software soon.  You can find some links to get you started below, and I plan to update this list with further details, links & info.

Adobe Connect: An Adobe Connect Reseller, RefinedData, offers an integration.  There is a review of this posted on the Moodle community, and a Powerpoint of how this has worked for Lubeck University in Germany.

DimDim Web Meeting: The only free solution of the bunch.  This is an easy to download & install 3rd party module for Moodle 1.8 & beyond.

Elluminate: Remote-Learner's integration with Open Knowledge Technologies involves a module and a block, with an option for an ELM version if you're hosting Elluminate yourself, or an SAS version if Elluminate is hosting for you.  Elluminate offers documentation, a quick reference guide, and a free one-year full use license to any K-12 school.

WebEx: A WebEx module & integration will be available soon with Moodlerooms.  I recently documented this feature & am excited for its release!  More information will be posted to their documentation site as it is available, which I will announce here.

Wimba: Wimba has a lot of support for this integration - they occasionally offer a live demo, provide a documentation guide for versions 1.6 through 1.9, and have a showcase and sandbox area you can play in.  Moodlerooms offers a Wimba integration which Michael Penney will be speaking to in a webinar on April 28th.