Voice Tools provide you with the flexibility of adding audio to your Blackboard course. For example, you may want to create an announcement about an upcoming exam. You want the students to not only “see” the announcement but also “hear” it. Or, you’re teaching a foreign language class and you want students to speak the foreign language when participating in a discussion board. Voice Tools do copy to other courses and export for PodCasting! Click here for more details on Wimba Voice Tools.

Equipment
A microphone and speakers are needed to use the Voice Tools or Live Classroom within Blackboard. An inexpensive headset with microphone will do fine.

Live Classroom is collaboration software available through Blackboard that provides synchronous communication at a distance through the computer. The software supports application sharing, chat, live audio, video, content display, polling, and a whiteboard feature. The sessions may be archived for future viewing.

Not teaching online? There are other ways to use Live Classroom. For example, you have a tough lesson that students would like to listen to again. You can record yourself presenting in your office using Live Classroom and make the archive available to the students.

Click here for more details on using Wimba Live Classroom.