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vitero (virtual team room) is a web-based application that allows to conduct effective virtual meetings, live e-learning sessions and e-business live communication under realworld conditions. Unlike other tools for web conferencing or web-based training known so far, vitero uses realworld metaphors, i.e. habits, structures and principles known from reality, which help users get quickly familiar and feel convenient in the virtual environment. Despite not being physically assembled in the same location, participants of a vitero meeting feel ‚right in the middle of it'. Hence, vitero provides all the preconditions necessary to create a personal working atmosphere, which is of crucial importance to make virtual online communication settings a successful endeavor.
The vitero room looks like a real conferencing room. Participants, who are all represented by a photo avatar (or, alternatively, by their live image over webcam) plus their name, sit around a conferencing table, with the moderator or tutor sitting at the upper end of the table on one of the chairs highlighted in color. Audio communication is done by voice-over-IP using a computer headset, or alternatively over telephone (vitero phone). Another way of communication offers text chat, with the postings made displayed in speech bubbles next to the respective avatar. A third, special feature for communication in vitero are non-verbal gestures participants may use, such as ‘Thumb up' or ‘Thumb down' to show their consent or dissent in a discussion, or ‘Raised hand' to signal a request to speak. Any electronic content connected to the discussion or presentation, such as a spreadsheet, a text document or a web page, can be visualized in the center of the virtual conferencing table and thus made visible for any participant, just as you do with an overhead projector in face-to-face settings.
vitero offers a lot of options for variation and extension. For example, settings in vitero can take place with or without moderation, or with moderation and co-moderation. The tools used for moderation allow to structure and direct settings, just like a moderator does in a face-to-face meeting or discussion. Co-moderation is useful particularly for settings in which the moderator has little or no experience with vitero or in which moderation tasks are to be split between two people. Furthermore, vitero offers a number of options for integrating various communication, presentation and interaction techniques, such as brainstorming or card-based techniques (anonymous or overt).
As you have the possibility to acquire single modules of the vitero product series, it is possible to adapt the system for discrete application fields and requirements. vitero cooperation offers an application sharing feature that allows to commonly use programs or edit documents that are stored on one participant's computer. If used in project team meetings, for example, each participant can show his/her document or application to the other participants, edit the document or application while all other participants are watching, and even let other participants do so. High-performance application sharing in vitero is ensured even when the number of participants is increased to twenty (vitero 20) or forty (vitero 40).
vitero next room allows participants of a meeting or training session to adjourn to a room of their own at short notice in order to consult with one another or work on some issue. Integrating a large number of viewers or spectators (100, 500, 1000 or more) is made possible by vitero audience (flash), which allows to broadcast events (e.g. panel discussions or presentations). Using vitero capture, you can record virtual meetings easily, just as you use a video or tape recorder. And vitero webcam offers the possibility to integrate live streams into vitero sessions over webcam.
vitero language lab offers optimum support for lively collaborative language learning and training. vitero language lab not only integrates the functions and features of a conventional language learning lab into a virtual classroom system, it offers also a number of additional features for modern and effective language learning and training, such as flexible and quick alternation of individual exercises, tandem exercises and group exercises. Using vitero language lab, a room equipped with personal computers can easily be turned into an innovative and technically sophisticated language learning lab. Alternatively, the system can be used to learn and train languages from the computer at home or at the workplace.
