The Best Online Presentation Tools: Top picks for hosting a live tutorial or collaborative session
RSSA few months back, I featured some nifty screen capture tools for making video tutorials, or screencasts, to share with students and teachers. While screencasts are great, sometimes you need to be on hand to offer live help to people who can’t meet with you in person. In those cases, a live, online presentation is the way to go.
The following tools enable you to offer assistance in real-time on the Web. All are free or offer basic versions of the service at no cost.
With Join.me, Mac and Windows users can easily share their computer screens with each other. Once you’ve downloaded the Join.me client, you can start sharing your screen with anyone you like. Simply provide your nine-digit code to your collaborators to give them access to your screen; there’s also a chat function. A free service from Log Me In, Join.me is very handy for conducting a demonstration for students, walking colleagues through the steps of how to use an application, or delivering a virtual presentation.
Big Marker offers the most features and options of all of the free online presentation tools I’ve tried this year. Use it for conducting online tutoring or brainstorming sessions and other presentations. With Big Marker, you can create your choice of a private or public online meeting room. If you make your room public, anyone can join. In a private session, you’ll have to supply participants a password to enter the room. Once in your Big Marker conference, you can share screens, chat via text or audio, or turn on your webcam so that people can see and hear you. Your Big Marker room comes with a whiteboard that you and your participants can write and draw on. As the conference creator, you control who can be heard or seen in the live audio and video chats.
Vyew offers tools for sharing and discussing content with others. Upload slides or documents and annotate and discuss with other participants in your Vyew room. A whiteboard is provided on which you can type and draw. If you want to share your computer screen with attendees, you can do that in Vyew, too. Users can talk to each other using voice and text chat. Vyew doesn’t require a software download and can be used free of charge with up to 20 participants. The free version of Vyew is ad supported so if you’re concerned about displaying advertising within your presentation, consider upgrading to one of Vyew’s paid plans, which start at $9.95 per month.
Scribblar is a simple service designed for creative, real-time collaboration. In Scribblar, users can upload and edit images and drawings together. There’s also support for math functions in your whiteboard. Commenting can take place directly on the whiteboard or in one of two sidebar chat options: text or voice. At this time, Scribblar doesn’t offer a screen- sharing option.
From the makers of Slideshare comes Zipcast, a service for conducting online presentations. In Zipcast, you can share your slides, talk with and respond to your audience, and have them interact with each other in real time on one page.
In the free version of Zipcast, you can make your presentation private or public. A pro version (prices start at $19/month) comes without ads and lets you password protect your presentation.
You Might Also Like:
Five Cool Tools for Creating Infographics
| Author Information |
| Richard Byrne (richardbyrne@freetech4teachers.com), a high school social studies teacher, writes the award-winning blog “ |
