Using these apps has become a trend in distance education & has made the life of students much more easier that now never need to go to college to attend weekend classes which earlier was mandatory in some of distance learning courses. Now students has all the access of live lectures & dubbed audio & video lectures, digital library from the ease of their home.
Top Online Apps & Tools used in Delivering Distance Education
Facetime
Facetime is a video conferencing tool available in Apple's iOs devices. Millions of apple users can collaborate with each other using this amazing tool for free. Universities offering distance education has already understood the importance of this tool and has started using it delivering education online.
Google Plus Hangout
This is yet another great tool for video conferencing & can be used to offer distance education through mobile devices. At one time maximum 15 people can join one hangout using this tool. All you need to have is a Google ID, which we're sure you must be having.
Skype
Software giant Microsoft owned communication app called Skype, is one of the widely used communication app used today for audio & video conferencing. The application provide cross platform compatibility that enables user to connect with people available of different platforms including PCs, Tablets & smartphones. You need to register an Skype ID to use this app, the ID doesn't cost any money.
Youtube
Youtube is world's largest video sharing platform available on internet. Youtube is owned by internet search engine giant Google. Major universities & institutes are taking advantages advantage of Youtube now a days. These institutes uploads educational material on the website which their subscribers can view. The video can be marked as private and can also be viewed after the permission from the admin. Hundreds of online classes are now a days running on Youtube. If you have a Google account you can use this website.
ooVoo
ooVoo is one of the most popular app for doing video conferencing on cross platform. The application is available for desktop, mobile, tablets & facebook. This could be a great app for delivering lectures & presentation to a group of 12 people. The app can be used as a tool to deliver distance education. You can use this app by creating an ooVoo account or login with your Facebook account.
Camfrog
Camfrog is another free live webcam video chat room software for Windows XP, Windows 7, and Mac OS X. Although its pretty different than the apps we mentioned above as its more like a social network to do video chat with strangers but on the same time it also allows you to do video chat in your own private chat room. You can add people by their nick name. This app can be used as a tool to deliver lactures privately.
There are many other free video conferencing & collaboration tools are also available on internet but we found the above mentioned tools more effective. If you know about any of the free tool that can help universities delivering distance education, please share with with us & we'll try to include that in our post.
