Miguel Paz Soldan and Emi Ahn demonstrated the use of Flash chat room and Breeze Live (chat). They use these tools to communicate in real time with students in their online class.

Miguel is using the Breeze Live chatroom. He is very enthusiastic about this virtual classroom. He thinks it makes an especially effective tool for exam reviews. All the student has to do to participate is to download a copy of the free Flash player and then log into the internet at the appropriate URL.

Miguel has a camera mounted on his computer. Students can see him and hear him. Miguel can draw on a whiteboard which the students can see. He can give the students permission to be a "presenter" and then they too can draw on the whiteboard.

If the student has a camera, Miguel can also see the student. The Logitech cameras that are good for this purpose cost about $30-$60. The chatroom has text capability also, so Miguel and his students can type in messages that can be seen by all who are logged into the chatroom.

Miguel want to use the site in the future for students to do collaborative work. Students would post a time they will all enter the chatroom and begin working together.

He also want to create powerpoint presentations on various topics that could be brought into the chatroom (once they are converted to swf files in Flash). Then the student might access a menu of Flash videos on various topics.

There is an audio component to Breeze Live. However, we have been having some problems with it fading out occasionally. It may be a band width problem. We are still working on it to figure out a solution and make the audio component more reliable.

Emi uses the Flash chatroom. She requires students enrolled in her online class to have a camera. All the students log on to the chat room for oral exams. They can also access a Japanese tutor during set hours each week to practice their Japanese or ask questions.

Jeff Anderson identifies the advantage of using Breeze Live as the independence it provides the instructor. He/she doesn't have to rely on a developer to organize the chatroom. The instructor can do it because Breeze provides some preconfigured items.

In contrast, Flash chatroom allows you to work with a developer to make more customized settings.