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Implementing Distance Learning: Page 6 of 11

Avacaster was designed to excel as a synchronous learning application, through which teachers and students all experience and participate in the class at the same time, in realtime. But many distance learning providers also like to offer asynchronous classes, in which the student can attend not only anywhere, but at anytime. Avacaster achieves this through an archive function.

Classes can be archived by clicking a Start and an End button along the right side of the Administrator screen. Everything in between those clicks is recorded and synchronized, including the video, slides, chat, and even whiteboard scribbles. An archived class can be streamed back to a student just like a live class, only without the ability to participate. The result is like a pre-recorded radio talk show-without the call-ins.

Wayne Coston, Media and Technology Specialist at the Choctaw Nation's Language Department, archives all of their classes so that students can replay them at any time. Avacaster enables remote control of video encoders within the Administrator interface, and Coston found it to be a convenient solution for all of his archiving needs. This includes not only Lillie Roberts' Avacaster'd classes, but also the non-Avacaster, two-way video classes they feed remotely to several regional public schools.

MAKING THE GRADE

Nancy Cooper, middle school instructor at 21st Century Cyber School, is pretty satisfied with the results. She "really enjoyed using Avacast to feel connected to my students. It felt like I was really teaching." Not surprisingly, she cites the limitations to students' feedback as the biggest disadvantages. "You cannot visually see the students, you cannot hear them speak to you," and because there is a few seconds' latency inherent in the video stream, "there is wait time between replies."