As Influenza A (H1N1) continues to spread around the world, a local outbreak may force schools to close. According to guidelines from the Education Bureau, schools should provide students with support to enable learning at home during class suspension. Microsoft® Office Live Meeting realizes an online learning platform, through which students can attend classes at home with their networked PCs. Moreover, students and teachers can interact with each other through this online platform when questions and problems arise. Learning continues even with classes are suspened.

Microsoft Office Live Meeting is an online learning platform, teachers can upload their lecture notes and presentations to the platform, and students can attend classes and have group discussions – all through the internet. Students can also enhance their learning experience by connecting their PCs to microphones, writing boards and webcam for more multimedia information in the form of audio and visual exchanges.
C. & M. A. Chui Chak Lam Memorial School has implemented "Virtual Classroom" with Microsoft Office Live Meeting. The virtual classroom via Microsoft Office Live Meeting consists of two parts. Part 1: Teaching videos are uploaded to the learning platform for students' online learning. Part 2: A 30-minute "Q&A Session" is conducted daily. Teachers will answer all students' questions raised online on the "Virtual Whiteboard", just as teaching in class.
Learn through video conferencing at home during class suspension (Source provided by Hong Kong Economic Times)
Schools set up virtual classroom in preparation for school suspension (Source provided by Ming Pao News)
Primary schools get prepared for school suspension (Source provided by i-cable)
( http://cablenews.i-cable.com/webapps/news_video/index.php?news_id=303449&category )
Tsung Tsin Primary School and Kindergarten has implemented Microsoft Office Live Meeting as an online communication and collaboration platform for students to continue their learning during the period of school suspension. The school has also found other ways in using the platform including online exchange sessions with schools in other countries.

Microsoft Office Live Meeting - comprehensive online communication and collaboration platform for teachers and students

Microsoft Office Live Meeting features a number of functions to enhance students' learning efficiency. First of all, remarks made by teachers can be viewed and edited by students using the note sharing function in Live Meeting, so that all students can learn the study key-points in real-time. Also, notes saved during the learning process can be retrieved for later revision and reference.

Furthermore, Live Meeting also includes the functions of e-boards and related annotation tools, enabling the use of various graphic marks, fonts and flowcharts. While these tools allow teachers to conveniently highlight the key-points of the presentation, they can also spice up the presentation contents to attract the attention and stimulate the interest of the students.

In addition, students can easily look up information with the new high-speed search function and the high-precision record-and-play function. Both usage and management of study information become more efficient and convenient.

Each online classroom can accommodate 1250 attendants, and the Microsoft Live Meeting Professional Version can even accommodate up to 2500 attendants. When teachers plan to invite a large number of students to participate in online learning, they only need to send out an email or calendar invitation and easily compile an attendance list.

Also, teachers can easily understand the feedbacks and progress of their students through a simple questionnaire. This will enable targeted teaching practice for more effective and efficient results.

Microsoft Office Live Meeting has been launched for over ten years and schools can receive technical support from Microsoft. With the use of Microsoft server in Live Meeting, schools are relieved from worries of possible hanging problems due to heavy data flow.

Furthermore, Live Meeting offers highly reliable service. Schools can significantly lower their management and maintenance costs, and divest their resources on more productive teaching and learning to deliver higher quality education.
Microsoft Office Live Meeting software is easy to learn and use, and is a great tool for online learning.
If you wish to learn more about the software operation of Live Meeting, please download Microsoft Live Meeting System Requirements (in Chinese) or view the Step-by-Step Guide. In addition, you can watch Microsoft's Teaching Demonstration Videos.
Act now and register at www.microsoft.com/livemeeting for free trial of the Microsoft Office Live Meeting service. You can also contact our customer service hotline at 2388 9600.

If you have decided to provide better learning facilities to both teachers and students, you may purchase Microsoft Office Live Meeting under Microsoft School agreement or Open License for Academic.

You can also email us at hkedu@microsoft.com for the above enquiries.