Question: [Study Group] Where do we meet?

[BobWay]

I'd like to focus on the material I want to present as part of the study group. While I'm doing that, I think there are some important questions that you as a group can work out for me.

Where do we meet?

This is really a technology question. I'd like the opportunity to see other people's faces during our sessions. Especially when questions are asked. This is much better for me than just talking into a camera while others watch. I presumed that I would just use Skype back when I thought the group would be small. But with the larger size and still others who might want to just watch as an audience that probably won't work.

• Zoom: I've use Zoom before and it has worked nicely with small groups. They have reasonable pricing as well.
• room.sh: I only know about this because Coil tweeted about it. I like that they are supporting WebMonitization even if we won't be using that feature. But I don't know if it will scale or record. 
• other?  Perhaps y'all have other ideas?

It would be great if someone from the study group put together a test session with people from around the world. That way we'll know that the chosen system will live up to its promises once we get started. Both of these have free plans that should work for testing. One of the things I'm interested in, is if people could "re-stream" our live sessions to some of the other platforms that people prefer.

Will someone step up and take this on as a project?

Thank you in advance!

[ScottBranson]

Hi Bob,

Based on what you are describing, my wife suggested using a learning management solution like Moodle. She uses Moodle for teaching her online and hybrid courses. There are plugins for Zoom, WebEx Meetings, H5P interactive video content, text based chat etc. and the platform allows you to break down content by topic/week. It could be one way to help keep everything organized. Thoughts?

[BobWay]

2 minutes ago, Rabbit_Kick_Club said:

Based on what you are describing, my wife suggested using a learning management solution like Moodle. ... It could be one way to help keep everything organized. Thoughts?

Tell your wife thank you very much for the suggestions. I have zero experience with these products so I was just personally hesitant to look into them. I briefly looked into Google Classroom but was disappointed that it wasn't integrated with any video collaboration tools.

Personally, I'm 100% willing to have the study group better organized using a LMS. But I'm don't want to learn or manage the LMS myself. I'd like to spend as much time as I can preparing material and evaluating XRPL client software to use for hands-on examples.

If some one wants to set one up a LMS, then tell me how it can just, "show up" and video present to the study group, that would make me very happy. You are right, it might also be a good tool for others to summarize the material after the fact.

[ScottBranson]

We can set Moodle up for you and admin it, if we decide to go that direction. I looked at the requirements for Moodle and it looks like a pretty straight forward PHP app that runs on a LAMP stack.

I would volunteer server space (assuming we don't need like a massive server) and could sys admin the LMS. Ms. Rabbit is willing to help with the actual course design and organization, as her university uses Moodle. It looks like we would still need some sort of a Zoom or other video conferencing account. It looks like Zoom allows up to 50 users, and videos can be streamed to Moodle, YouTube, and other platforms.

I'm not 100%, but it looks like room.sh limits video calls to 6 participants max.

Edited April 24, 2019 by Rabbit_Kick_Club
I specified I can't afford to pay for a massive server :)

[BobWay]

3 minutes ago, Rabbit_Kick_Club said:

It looks like Zoom allows up to 50 users

I'm happy to pay for the Zoom "Pro" version. I had a discussion with them in online chat. They claim it will work with up to 100 video participants. It creates 4 pages of video thumbnails. I would probably have to set up two computers. One to present and stream from, and another to see everyone's faces. But that won't be a bother and I have great bandwidth.

I'd just like a distributed group to test it out, to make sure the video works well in Brazil, Japan, Africa, India, etc.  I'm sure it works pretty good inside the US and likely Europe as well.  But I really get flummoxed when there are technical difficulties as I'm trying to get started with a presentation.

[BobWay]

17 minutes ago, Rabbit_Kick_Club said:

We can set Moodle up for you and admin it, if we decide to go that direction. I looked at the requirements for Moodle and it looks like a pretty straight forward PHP app that runs on a LAMP stack.

 I would volunteer server space (assuming we don't need like a massive server) and could sys admin the LMS. Ms. Rabbit is willing to help with the actual course design and organization, as her university uses Moodle.

It would be great if you two could do that. I'm not the most organized person on the planet.

The only constraints I'll add two conflicting and impossible constraints. 

• I'm trying to keep things as open as possible to the rest of the XRP Community.
• I'd like to avoid syphoning off people from this site.

That is why I moved the discussion back here to XRP Chat. I'd like people to be able to watch our progress even if they don't have time to actively participate at this time. The operators and mods have been extremely kind to me here. I feel it would be rude to shift a lot of people's attention elsewhere. Operating the group sessions elsewhere is fine. But I think we should encourage the broader XRP Community to come back here for additional information and question answers.

But I'll defer to your operational expertise for making the Study Group a productive learning experience for us all.

 

[ScottBranson]

3 minutes ago, BobWay said:

• I'm trying to keep things as open as possible to the rest of the XRP Community. 
• I'd like to avoid syphoning off people from this site.

I wonder about keeping it as simple as possible, then - use Zoom for live video calls, then post the recordings to YouTube. Links to videos and Q&A can then happen in XRPChat.

The main benefit of Moodle would be having a permanent course shell where you can organize information easily in sequence in one place (e.g., if you are planning to upload information in multiple formats- zoom videos, word documents/pdfs, readings, glossary of key terms, quizzes, surveys, live chat, etc.) However, this may not be needed.

[BobWay]

7 hours ago, Rabbit_Kick_Club said:

The main benefit of Moodle would be having a permanent course shell where you can organize information easily in sequence in one place (e.g., if you are planning to upload information in multiple formats- zoom videos, word documents/pdfs, readings, glossary of key terms, quizzes, surveys, live chat, etc.) However, this may not be needed.

That is where this discussion starts to get fun!

Personally, I do not want to organize a permanent course. Meaning one that I repeat several times as new people join the XRP community.

However, I am 100% supportive of anyone who does want to create a persistent and/or repeatable course like that using the material we all share. Everything I provide or share is absolutely intended for others to take an adapt in order to better educate people. If you'd like to get that adaption process started now, that would be awesome.

Just to be clear, should you (or anyone else) decide to put in the work to turn the study group material into a formal course, feel free to charge for or otherwise monetize your work. That was absolutely my intention in starting this project. I'm not looking for credit or compensation.

Edited April 24, 2019 by BobWay

[180247]

Bob -consider secondlife or sansar as a metaverse virtual meeting place you will be supprised.

[BobWay]

10 hours ago, 180247 said:

Bob -consider secondlife or sansar as a metaverse virtual meeting place you will be supprised.

I'm sure it would, but I want to see people's faces so I can judge by their reactions how good a job I'm doing of explaining a topic.

 

[XrPMaximus]

HI all, I have only used Skype Business at work for large group meetings, with Video. Open to anything, preferably free :-)

I own the fan site XRP4U.com, hosted by WordPress running on a business account with Elementor and I have just looked at some Moodle plugins but need to look much deeper into this as never seen Moodle before and what the Wordpress plugin provides.

Also I can organise Youtube content, Audio clips, Powerpoint etc into easy navigable pages to keep all relevant media in a single hub. Trying to add a members site login to restrict media until presentable to a wider audience where it can then be displayed on an separate open page for global viewing. Pages could also be shared by Region/Language to avoid duplicate material in multiple languages in a single page.

Open to all suggestions.

Edited April 27, 2019 by XrPMaximus

[BobWay]

16 hours ago, XrPMaximus said:

HI all, I have only used Skype Business at work for large group meetings, with Video. Open to anything, preferably free :-)

Can you test to see if you can use Zoom.us through your browser?  There is a downloadable version as well, but sometimes that is locked down on work machines.

Zoom should be free for everyone who is not organizing the meeting (me). But it is reasonable for me as well ($15 a month) so no worries.

[XrPMaximus]

Hi Bob, I am able to run a Zoom browser meeting, this is truly a full featured meeting tool!

I do not think I could run this from my workplace as even the Browser tool needs to install a file, I will consider a personal laptop for this during working hours.

[BobWay]

21 hours ago, XrPMaximus said:

Hi Bob, I am able to run a Zoom browser meeting, this is truly a full featured meeting tool!

I do not think I could run this from my workplace as even the Browser tool needs to install a file, I will consider a personal laptop for this during working hours.

That's great. I think it is the most scalable tool I know for a decent price. I always hate those downloadable instal gizmos. In the past I've ended up with a half dozen of them on my machine. That always creeped me out since each could in theory turn on my camera and mic.

If anyone has problems with Zoom, please let me know. I'm sure there are a lot of smart people here that can come up with a work around.

[AFutureInReverse]

Everyone, I have no experience with large training platforms, but I am happy to help test when needed.