Web conferencing and its benefits
With the arrival of the Internet, the world has shrunk to a small place with incredible communication means like Web conferencing solutions. Web conferencing is often sold as a service, hosted on a web server controlled by the vendor. Offerings vary per vendor but most hosted services provide a cost per user per minute model, a monthly flat fee model and a seat model. Web conferencing services offer many advantages, in that it combines the visual with the oral. It is often furthermore supported by a text-based communication facility, such as a chat room, allowing organizers to set up various activities. Web conferencing is a set of interactive telecommunication technologies which allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously. It has also been called ‘visual collaboration’ and is a type of groupware.
Face to face conferences used to be the custom previously for carrying out seminars and presentations. Now, people from all over the world can connect to be present at a talk, network with each other and on the whole have a virtual meeting. Web conferencing services facilitate bridging distances. PC Video conferencing systems throughout the 1990s rapidly evolved from highly expensive proprietary equipment, software and network requirements to standards based technology that is readily available to the general public at a reasonable cost. The concepts of IP video conference and PC video conferencing are now being introduced to online networking websites, in order to help businesses form profitable relationships quickly and efficiently without leaving their place of work.
Businesses and corporate firms are widening their horizons to curtain the world. Hence, in such a scenario, businesses should be prepared with the tools par excellence to make easy reaching out to the world. In today’s hectic, time bound, frenzied lifestyles, all and sundry would rather not go travelling hundreds of miles just to attend a meeting. PC video conferencing is thus just the thing way to meet people spread out all over the world and conquering the physical distances. In a web conference or web meeting, every participant sits at his or her own computer and is linked to other participants via the internet.
Web-based video conferencing is a real-time communication tool, which can be used to allow students to communicate with learners who are in a different geographical location. Via the use of web-based video conferencing, teachers can support simultaneous conversation between language learners in pairs or small groups. Activities can be adapted for use by the whole class, whereby one-to-one communication is shared via projection onto a screen.