PBwiki and YackPack give wikis a voice for education
I received an email from Curt Hopkins today about PBwiki and YackPack getting together to offer a widget you can download into your wiki that allows anyone visiting your site to just press a button and talk. I downloaded it and Lani and I tried it out. It was amazing! It is so cool and so easy!
Clips from the press release:
- “There is something magical about hearing someone else’s voice,” said Ramit Sethi, PBwiki co-founder. “It takes collaboration to an entirely different level.”
- Dr. BJ Fogg said, “Voice builds unity.”
- To use the widget, sign up for a PBwiki at http://www.pbwiki.com, click the edit button on any page on your wiki, and insert the Walkie Talke plugin.
An online press conference, via the WalkieTalkie widget will be held on their press wiki, on Thursday at 6pm (PST). You just have to click this link http://press.pbwiki.com and then click the YackPack button to talk. Both Ramit from PB wiki and Dr. BJ Fogg from YackPack witll be there. I am going to try to be there!
I have been constantly amazed at PBwiki. They have been front and center with doing things to help educators and really seek educators’ input. I serve on their board but regretfully I have not participated as much as I would like to. I’ve been following all they are doing but not been involved myself too much. This year has been one filled with learning for me but somehow the research aspects of my blogging project have consumed me. Many things that I would like to be doing have had to put on hold. The end is in sight but the end means no more blogging with a special group of kids and that I don’t like!
I installed the widget on a wiki I had created in the past. I called the page Voices. I’ll have it open off and on for a while today. Yack if you like!
Accolades to PBwiki and YackPack for providing this benefit to educators and students! We appreciate you!
April 11th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Cool stuff. I borrowed your site for a little test this afternoon — worked perfectly.
Thanks for the pointer!
April 11th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Glad you were able to test it! It is so cool! I continue to be amazed and want all our kids to have the opportunity to be amazed too!
April 11th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Anne: The video walkthrough’s up on our blog now too: http://blog.pbwiki.com/2007/04/11/pbwiki-announces-voice-chat-and-it-is-awesome/.
April 11th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Yes!! This is awesome! ! Thanks so much for making this available for us!!!
April 12th, 2007 at 7:58 am
Anne, I just tried out the voice chat on the Voices blog. Very cool! I had the chance to chat with Julie Lindsay (she’s just starting her weekend in Bangledesh). I think this is a great wiki enhancement. Sometimes you just get tired of typing ;-), so being able to chat with your collaborators will be very useful. The number displayed in the bottom-right corner of the logo was 5 and I think that means there were five people visiting the page at the time. Could all five have heard our conversation and joined in if they chose to do so?
April 12th, 2007 at 8:01 am
Hi Anne
Just tried this on your wiki with a wonderful person from Canada. It works but from Bangladesh I was getting a LOT of echo. I do love PBWiki, but also use Wikispaces and Evoca for audio as well.
Julie
April 12th, 2007 at 8:03 am
Diane, sorry I forgot your name!
I agree, typing slows me down, however echo is also very disturbing.
what an interesting online life we lead
Julie
April 12th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Hi Diane and Julie,
Glad you had a nice chat! Wish I could have joined in! Yes that number at the bottom right hand indicates how many are visiting the page and they could have joined in at any time. I am not sure about the echo but I am sure that they will try to fix it if at all possible. I’m learning as I go and I encourage anybody reading this to join the press conference tonight if at all possible.
April 15th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
[…] Pbwiki has a new tool–a voice-chat box you can install within the wiki.  Vicki Davis explains that Yackpack and Pbwiki have combined forces to create this handy tool. […]
April 27th, 2007 at 2:49 am
We’ve been using the “Private Pack” feature over on wikispaces and it’s amazing! Basically you join the “pack” and can leave “audio e-mail” for anyone else in the group. It’s totally private, so only those in the group can communicate.
We have students from New Zealand to Malaysia to the United States chatting. Totally different time zones? Not a problem anymore!
December 27th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
[…] YackPack I am fascinated with the facility that YackPack provides for group collaboration. Recently Anne Davis blogged about the new free WalkieTalkie widget provided for instant communication between people viewing the same webpage. In fact PBWiki have included this YackPack widget as a feature. This is excellent news. This is what CNET’s webware had to say about it. I was fortunate to try it out the other day and spoke to Diane Hammond from Canada via Anne’s Voices wiki page. I could hear Diane clearly but my own voice was rebounding with lots of echo. This is the ongoing problem we have from Bangladesh where our bandwidth I think is affecting the quality. Kim Cofino in her recent post Yakking it up on YackPack gives an excellent overview of the pros and cons of using this online software in a classroom and collaborative situation. […]
March 12th, 2011 at 12:45 am
It´s amazing precisely how online in your free time job opportunities can assist anyone to discover what exactly they tries with less effort simply by effective occasion administration.
April 10th, 2011 at 12:50 am
Hi, i think that i saw you visited my site thus i came to “return the favor”.I’m attempting to find things to enhance my site!! I suppose its ok to use a few of your ideas!! Here is a link to my site , what do u think of it? Feedback would be appreciated
SeoTräume
July 25th, 2011 at 6:55 pm
If it is not a problem, Could the webmaster explain why he has only written this quite small article instead of a really more extensive post. It was decent though and I hope you can elaborate more on it in future posts. Thank you