Three Free Tools for Giving Remote Presentations

Fuente: http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2015/12/three-free-tools-for-giving-remote.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=freetech4teachers#.VoFP-fnhDDc

Last night I suggested using Presefy to have students follow along with your slides on their mobile devices or laptops. Presefy is great if everyone is in the same room and you're speaking directly to them. When everyone is not in the same place, you'll need to find another tool to give a remote presentation. 

Appear.in is a free video conferencing service that allows you to create a video conference room without registering for any kind of account. Your Appear.in video conference room can accommodate up to eight people. To create your room just go to Appear.in, pick a room name, and grant Appear.in access to your webcam. Appear.in will give you a URL for your conference room. Share that URL with the people that you want to join you in your video conference. If you want to save your room to re-use on multiple occasions, you can enter your email address and choose a password to lock and save your room. Locking your Appear.in room prevents people from using it when you're not in it. Appear.in does not require the installation of anything. It will work in Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.

Zoom.us is a great service for hosting and recording video conferences in high definition. Zoom.us allows you to record your video in a side-by-side format to equally feature both people in the recording or switch between featuring one person more than another in the video (click here for an example). When you record through Zoom you're given an HD video file to save locally as well as a separate HD voice recording. Zoom isn't limited to just webcam views as you can also share your screen through the service. Zoom's free plan allows you to record for up to forty minutes in each video. The number of videos that you can create is not limited. As you can screenshare through Zoom it could be also be a good platform for hosting remote tutoring sessions and or creating short instructional videos. Zoom does require that you install a desktop client in order to call, receive calls, and to record.

This post wouldn't be complete without mentioning Google+ Hangouts. A Google+ Hangout on Air will automatically record your presentation and save it in your YouTube account. A private Google+ Hangout will not record to your YouTube account. Both options allow you to broadcast your screen and slides. 

Applications for Education

All three of these tools can be used by teachers to present to students, but they can also be used by students to present to teachers and classmates. Students could use these remote presentation tools to host peer-reviews of slides and presentation pacing.