Co-Browsing Tools And Technology: A Mini-Guide

Ahhh, how time flies.  It was just about two years ago that my fellow bibliobloggers and I were agog over the co-browsing potential shown by a product called Jybe.  Just visited their website and it's all gone - hope the developers have moved on to other good things - they seemed like good guys.

Anyhoo, Kolabora.com has a posting today bringing us up to speed on the latest co-browsing options.  Most of them do cost money, but there were a couple that appear to be free, including a lite version (vRoom) of Elluminate, which we use here to great effect at the U of C.  There's a full review of vRoom here, and while the review doesn't read as very positive, my personal experience with Elluminate leads me to recommend that, if you're looking for a tool that will allow you to co-browse websites with a small number (1-3) of students AND offer very good Voice over IP quality, you should take a good look at this free tool.

And since I've put the cart first, co-browsing is the ability to share your web browser (and often any other application on your desktop) with someone in a remote location.  Need to walk a student through a tricky database search?  Almost impossible on the phone, but dead simple if you're both seeing the same screen.

I use Elluminate (full version) to teach to classes of students, but have fallen back on Skype and Unyte for my on-the-fly co-browsing needs.  One of the nicer things about vRoom though, is that it's completely web-based and thus platform independent.



Technorati Tags: co-browsing