TORONTO (BUSINESS WIRE) – Distance learning was at one time; a `lonely learning’ session where students were left to their own devices to absorb the training with little contact with their trainers.
Not anymore.
Today, e-learning has bec
TORONTO (BUSINESS WIRE) – Distance learning was at one time; a `lonely learning’ session where students were left to their own devices to absorb the training with little contact with their trainers.
Not anymore.
Today, e-learning has become more sophisticated as a result of the demand for higher levels of rapid interactivity and real time learning solutions. The Astound Conference Center enables organizations to bring the classroom to their market, not the market to their classroom while increasing the level of interactivity between trainers and their students.
Join Astound in the Canadian Pavillion (Booth 38) of the World Education Market Expo, Vancouver, B.C., May 21 – 24, 2001 for demonstrations of the Astound Conference Center capabilities.
Astound Incorporated’s Astound Conference Center is a completely integrated Web conferencing and collaboration service, including all the tools that make a virtual classroom as effective as sitting in a "live, learning environment."
The service combines real time conferencing, group collaboration, and on-demand information access in one easy-to-use service. Presenters (whether one or several) can maintain the high impact elements of their PowerPoint(R) or Astound presentations including slide builds, multimedia effects and animations, take viewers to Web sites using the Guided Web Tour feature or receive real-time feedback using the polling and survey functionality.
Astound Conference Center provides several ways for attendees to quickly and easily interact with presenters and each other. Group chat lets a subset of users break off from the main group to discuss issues privately and then re-join the main group when they are done.
The Astound Conference Center is the only solution on the market that enables the synchronized streaming of audio and video, for an enhanced conferencing experience. Voice over IP (VoIP) combined with Astound’s real-time chat provides all the benefits of an audio conference without the usual cost of conference calls
A presenter’s ability to understand attendee reaction to a meeting or presentation is vital. Astound Conference Center, the only service to perpetually let the presenter know the status of each attendee, has extended its market leadership through the addition of "emoticons". These icons that appear next to a participant’s name can be selected in real time by attendees in order to reflect how they’re "feeling" about the meeting ("bored", "agree", "disagree", "elaborate", "I have a question", applause, etc).
Astound allows then moderator and attendees can collaborate on any software application (Excel, Word, etc) on their desktops. At the end of the meeting, Astound Conference Center generates meeting minutes (which are based on input from moderators or attendees) and a list of action items.
Another key distance learning feature is Astound’s ability to support an asynchronized learning environment. Learning sessions can be recorded, or archived, for constant referral or playback for those who couldn’t attend or were late for the session can easily come up to speed.
Requiring only a Web browser, Astound Conference Center uses a small Java applet to ensure easy access, platform independence and speedy downloads. Dynamic HTML and intelligent pre-loading technologies allow even users with a dial up connection to have a true-to-life, effective experience, while maintaining firewall transparency.
About Astound
Founded in 1996, Astound Incorporated is a leading provider of Web conferencing and collaboration services, enabling companies to communicate in real time with their employees, customers and partners. With over 250,000 users of its award-winning presentation software, Astound Incorporated has leveraged this experience to launch the Astound Conference Center.
Requiring only a Web browser, the Astound Conference Center is the ideal way for businesses to conduct live interactive meetings, deliver high impact presentations, demonstrations and training via the Web to audiences of one to thousands.
Eleonora Panto
Dario Zucchini