Web conferencing is the cost-efficient alternative to conferences and seminars for many enterprises. This technology is also being utilized in other fields such as education. Service providers in this area are keen to innovating tailor-made Web conferencing solutions to suit different applications.

Dimdim, an open source Web conferencing company, announced the launch of its first-ever education-specific product line, Dimdim Virtual Classroom Pack, which has the capacity to empower 10 teachers to host up to 40 students at a time.

 

The new education platform offers a customizable Web-based classroom facility for a reasonable price, the company says. Dimdim hopes the move to Web conferencing will encourage educators worldwide to utilize the benefits of the platform, promoting education at a fraction of the cost of traditional alternatives.

 

Dimdim Virtual Classroom can be customized with a school logo and other features. It supports video chat and offers built-in voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Dimdim Virtual Classroom Pack supports traditional telephony using an audio bridge.

 

Two of the education facilities that collaborated with Dimdim include, Ohio State University and University of Pennsylvania. The virtual classroom enables them to offer real-time communication with students and faculty, share their classroom experience with others online and promote distance learning to remote students. The tool is also used to enable virtual meeting rooms for live discussions.

 

Among the companies that use the Dimdim platform for learning include Myngle and TutorJam. Myngle, a company that offers live interactive language instruction online, uses Dimdim to teach more than 20,000 registered users. TutorJam, an online tutor portal, uses Dimdim's platform as its online classroom to teach different subjects to students via a simple Web browser.

 

Dimdim also launched Zimlet, a Zimbra (News - Alert) Collaboration Suite that enables unified collaboration across campus-wide email systems using the popular open source e-mail solution, Dimdim said. The email system is being used by more than 400 universities, including Georgia Tech and Texas A&M.

 

Apart from these, Dimdim has released new integration modules with Moodle Course Management System version 1.9. It has also updated the Claroline collaborative learning environment module.

"Dimdim was launched with the goal to bring the world together, across all disciplines, whether in a business environment or on an academic campus," said DD Ganguly (News - Alert), CEO and co-founder of Dimdim, in a statement. "We feel it is our responsibility to provide easy to use, low cost collaboration tools like Dimdim Virtual Classroom Pack for schools and educational causes worldwide, and we are thrilled that several academic leaders have already embraced Dimdim to interact and share knowledge and ideas."