Increasingly students are being asked to do presentations using Wimba Classroom. Often the lecturer will promote the student to being a presenter by clicking the (-) next to their name in the right most column in the PEOPLE WINDOW.
Sometimes promoting a student to presenter status is not possible e.g. when doing a debate and keeping the teams in their own breakout rooms before the debate or in the preparation time between speakers.
A quick hack to allow participants to use lock talk without marking them a presenter is to get the student to rest the corner of a book on the CONTROL key to hold down the button. They have to remember to take the book off the button when they have finished their presentation (see attached picture). Presenters can also temporally promote students to being a presenter (so they have the LOCK TALK option by clicking the (-) in the right most column next to their name in the PEOPLE window.
Of course if students do this when they are not presenting there will be more background noise in the room. If the person does not remove their own personal LOCK TALK book, the presenter will quickly MUTE them by clicking (+) under the Mic column next to their name in the PEOPLE WINDOW.
Feel free to post other Wimba tips and hints to this forum ... we can all work together.
Peter Evans
http://community.baker-evans.com