HTML5 Virtual Classroom

Pluspunten

This platform works very well for one-on-one reading instruction for kids in grades 4 and up. Sharing a screen with a student helps focus the student's attention, and using the writing and highlighting tools on the shared screen allows me (the instructor) instant feedback on the student's understanding. Misunderstandings can be cleared up immediately, before the student can learn bad habits from their misunderstanding.

Minpunten

While it generally works well, customer support is hard to access when there is a problem. It can take days to hear back from the company.

Pluspunten

The Virtual Whiteboard API made it easy to integrate BrainCert's whiteboard into our own tutoring system. The automatic session recording is incredible and a must-have feature for our one-on-one tutoring sessions to ensure quality control and safety. The whiteboard space also includes functionality to help users diagnose their connection and webcam/microphone issues which previously would come back to us in the form of support calls and emails. The whiteboard space itself worked amazingly on both PCs and tablets, has all the basic tools and more handy tools like Wolfram Alpha and YouTube that teachers could take advantage of.

Minpunten

As a developer, I noticed the API behaved unexpectedly in some places, but nothing particularly major. The whiteboard occasionally takes some time to upload PDFs, but this seems to have been improved in recent updates.

Pluspunten

The ease in which it can be integrated.
The cross browser support is excellent.
The virtual classroom is particularly user friendly and intuitive to use.
The customer support has been awesome - the team always responds to my queries and have taken a lot of time to explain the product and how to optimally set up the server's for my clientele.
The convenience to share files and worksheets with students.

Minpunten

The screen sharing function does not always work

Pluspunten

compact...all in one solution. Video conferencing, screen sharing break rooms, whiteboard and lot more features make it suitable for a wide variety of classes.

Minpunten

user experience in mobile phones need to be improved. If there is an option for easily switching between full screen video and whiteboard in mobile browsers, it would be a handy tool for participating in classes on the go.

Pluspunten

My favorite feature is the audio and video streaming service. It works pretty well. The whiteboard is very useful, but typing on it is not not working well. Some students have also reported that my text was not being displayed in the intended place - sometimes it was partially not visible for them. Sometimes text boxes are copied from one slide to another automatically. Changing the size of fonts doesn't work properly, too. Besides, the system doesn't save the font settings from one slide to another. I like the break-out room function, but it's really a pain on the neck to work with it. The voice and video transmissions have apparently improved, but I have had to use some other conferencing apps concomitantly to have a good voice and video transmission.

Minpunten

I really liked all the features that the platform offers, but all of the them have issues that impact the users' experience. Some of them were mentioned in the previous question.