WizIQ Blog

Just launched - the new developers’ portal on WizIQ for easy virtual classroom integration in websites

We just opened a developer portal, from where website owners can integrate WizIQ Virtual Classroom in their websites, CMS/LMS systems using the WizIQ API.

WizIQ has supported web services for some time, allowing users to integrate the Virtual Classroom into any website or content management system that supports the education and training markets. New RESTful APIs are now fully documented on developer.wiziq.com. WizIQ will be providing more direct support through this site to users looking to leverage these APIs.

WizIQ will also be investing over the next several months in creating turnkey and/or well-documented integrations with such open source learning projects as Instructure Canvas, openLMS, Centre SIS, and openSIS. These solutions will become available on developer.wiziq.com and will complement our existing Moodle module, Building Block for the Blackboard LearnTM platform, as well as plugins for proprietary systems.

WizIQ's Virtual Classroom enables organizations, teachers and learners to connect live from anywhere, offering real-time collaboration and communication.

The WizIQ Virtual Classroom features include:

• Activities from your own website - schedule, manage and conduct live classes
• Live online classes to small or large number of attendees simultaneously
• Attendance report
• Co-brand WizIQ Virtual Classroom with your logo
• Multi-way audio (any number of attendees can speak at the same time)
• 4 live video streams
• Text chat
• Advance Whiteboard tool
• Content sharing (DOCX, PPT, XLSX, PDF, Videos, etc.)
• Recording and archiving - all classes are recorded for review
• Support available for seamless integration
• Get simple pricing plan that suits your need

For a complete developer’s guide, visit http://developer.wiziq.com/overview

WizIQ Launches Virtual Classroom Building Block for Blackboard Learn (TM)

Building Blocks^® is Blackboard's open architecture project. WizIQ has developed a new Blackboard Building Block to give synchronous, live classes using WizIQ Virtual Classroom, directly from the Blackboard Learn platform.

The WizIQ Virtual Classroom Building Block allows users of the Blackboard Learn^TM platform to schedule and launch live classes, view attendance reports, and view recordings by simply clicking on the links in their Blackboard Learn accounts. The WizIQ Virtual Classroom Blackboard Building Block works with Blackboard Learn 9.0 and 9.1.

The WizIQ Virtual Classroom Blackboard Building Block features include:

• Quick download, deployment, and configuration in just a few minutes
• WizIQ Virtual Classroom can be accessed without additional authentication or duplication of user databases
• Teachers, instructors, moderators, and course builders can schedule and manage classes, enter live classes, view attendance report and past class recordings from within Blackboard Learn platform.
• Advanced communication features such as web camera sharing, VoIP audio  communications, text chat and even screen and application sharing across computing platforms are available for real-time collaboration
• Instructors can share PDF, Word documents, Excel sheets, YouTube videos from inside the WizIQ Virtual Classroom with all users in the course
• Advanced Whiteboard tools built into WizIQ Virtual Classroom like drawing, math tool, etc., are available for better learning experience
• Instructors can allow students to use microphone, web camera, or write on the whiteboard

WizIQ Virtual Classroom Building Block for Blackboard Learn^TM platform integration

WizIQ Virtual Classroom Building Block provides a nicely integrated workflow with Blackboard Learn platform. The close integration of WizIQ’s virtual classroom Building Block with Blackboard Learn platform frees teachers to focus on their content instead of the technology. This integration provides a way for Blackboard Learn™ administrators to easily install and configure the WizIQ Virtual Classroom Blackboard Building Block; allow teachers, instructors, moderators and course builders to schedule classes as part of their course offering; and students to enter live classes and view past class recordings.

For comprehensive information on prerequisites, installation, configuration and integration, please visit http://www.wiziq.com/vcplugin/

WizIQ Virtual Classroom Blackboard Building Block for instructors

WizIQ Virtual Classroom Building Block for Blackboard Learn platform provides instructors with a highly organized interface to schedule and manage classes. For each course, instructors, teaching assistants, course builders, and/or graders can schedule, conduct, manage and record live classes. Furthermore, classes are made available to all students registered in that course.

Schedule live classes

Here are some simple steps to schedule a class:

• Define the class name, the start date and time, duration of class and description about the class in the class Schedule form (You can edit the class information any time)
• Choose to record a class or not
• Login to Blackboard Learn platform and click the Courses tab
• Select the course from the course listing
• Click Course Tools and select WizIQ Virtual Classroom Building Block from from Blackboard Learn’s Control Panel
• Fill the schedule class form and click the Submit button

Manage classes

Once classes are scheduled, they get listed in Live and Upcoming Classes and also appear in the instructor’s My Calendar.

Here is how you can manage your classes:

• View the complete list of current, upcoming and past classes on WizIQ Virtual Classroom home page
• Edit class details, or cancel the upcoming classes
• Join the class by simply clicking on that class’s title. Your students can also join the class in the same way (Attendees are not required to enter their usernames or passwords for the class, as they are pre-authenticated from the Blackboard Learn platform)
• View the attendance report including details like, attendee name, exact duration of attendance, etc., after the completion of the class
• View the recordings any time

WizIQ Virtual Classroom for students

Here is what students can do:

• View class listings and class details, and enter live classes
• Access recordings of past classes from WizIQ’s virtual classroom
• Access upcoming classes directly from the list of Live and Upcoming classes and it’s course calendar

To join a live class or view a recording, students can simply click on the class title and WizIQ Virtual Classroom is launched. Students are not required to enter a username or a password for the class as they are pre-authenticated by the Blackboard Learn^TM platform.

Once the live class is over, students can access recordings at any time.

Again, the complete guide is available in a print-friendly PDF format when you sign up here on WizIQ.

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A new function in the content library on WizIQ

This morning, I knew that I have my task cut out to let our members know of a new function on WizIQ. While I was grappling with the thought of taking snapshots from the pages, resizing them, and getting them ready to use them in the blog post, my colleague, Sukhpreet found this cool presentation by George Machlan (below in the post) in the e-teaching community. Sukhpreet, who is an active member of the e-teaching community, also happens to be an ardent fan of George. Thanks a million to George for doing my work :-) George has clearly explained about this function in few simple steps. Check out what this new thing from “Q” is all about!

File folder function in Content Library

Uploaded by George on WizIQ Tutorials

- Chinmaya Ram

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Now an image library for WizIQ courses

Now teachers can make their course pages visually appealing by adding symbolic images to them from the new image library. All images in the image library are optimized and categorized, so teachers don't have to worry about searching for suitable images on the Web and editing them before uploading to the course pages. We will keep adding more images and categories to the image library in the coming days. Teachers can also choose their own images from their computers or from the Web as before. The image library is available for both public and private courses.

Here is how you can add images:

Selecting an image

Uploading an image to your course page

The course listing page

This is how your courses are listed in the course listing page, with crisp images on the left that reflect the subjects you teach, neatly formatted, and with all the basic information about courses.

In case you find any problem with uploading images, please write to us at [email protected]

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Now short URLs for your learning resources on WizIQ

WizIQ users can already generate vanity URLs by suffixing their own user-names to WizIQ.com. A similar feature has now been extended where users can get short URLs for their learning resources as well.

What is a short URL?

In general, a short URL is something that is short in length, rather than a lengthy random number assigned to it, which is easy to remember and search, one that contains the name of a person/product/feature, etc. For example, the URL, http://www.wiziq.com/username/78256, was randomly generated by the website’s software, but, such an URL can be edited by a WizIQ user to make it short that looks like this: http://www.wiziq.com/username

A short URL is one that gives a user the ability to have his/her own name in the URL, where resources created by the user can be placed.

Advantages of a short URL on WizIQ

• Easy to share
• Easy to remember and search from the address bar of a browser
• Creates brand value
• Gives the ability to build brand image of the learning resources you own
• A web space of your own, where your public learning resources on the website can be placed

Examples of short URLs

A short URL of one of our most active teachers, Dr Subroto Biswas: http://www.wiziq.com/drsubrotobiswas


A short URL of classes scheduled by George: http://www.wiziq.com/George/classes


A short URL of tutorials created by George: http://www.wiziq.com/George/tutorials


A short URL tests created by Gurjinder: http://www.wiziq.com/techguru/tests


A short URL of George's followers: http://www.wiziq.com/George/followers

A short URL of users followed by George: http://www.wiziq.com/George/following

 Currently short URLs are available for classes, tutorials, tests, followers, and users followed by a user. Short URL will be made available to the courses soon.

Unveiling the new WizIQ logo

WizIQ logo, significant in brand positioning, has undergone a subtle change both in the way ‘WizIQ’ is written and pronounced. With 100,000 ESPs (teachers, trainers, organizations, colleges, universities, and institutions) on our platform and more joining us every new day, we wanted to reflect who we are and the market we serve through our brand new logo.

In WizIQ, ‘Wiz’ and ‘IQ’ are spelt separately; ‘Wiz’ stands for wizard, and ‘IQ’, an abbreviation of Intelligence Quotient.

Introducing the new WizIQ logo

We are constantly striving to make WizIQ better for teachers and students by creating a perfect learning environment through our Virtual Classroom and other resources.

We request all our partners/ESPs, who are using the WizIQ logo for co-branding, or on their websites, to replace the old logo(WiZiQ) with the new WizIQ logo (WizIQ).

Download the new logo from here: http://wqimg.com/wiziqcss/css/skin01/images/wiziq_logo.gif

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