How to have your first online French class on online-french-teacher.com ?
BigBlueButton is a first choice option, working on laptops as well as tablets or phones, Windows, Mac, Linux, Android or Iphone.
After contacting me, you will receive a BigBlueButton link with a date you proposed and voilà ! Just copy the BigBlueButton link (https://talk.domainepublic.net/b/………) your teacher sent you in your browser (as in the picture).
Then enter your name and hit the "Start" button (as in the picture below)
Allow access to your microphone when asked and you're done. It's very straigthforward and BigBlueButton works fine with Mozilla Firefox, Chrome and Chromium.
In case something went wrong :
Don't wait, send an email and tell why it didn't work, we'll work it out. The fallback option is jitsi meet.
BigBlueButton
BigBlueButton is a powerful, video conferencing platform that securely connects users across browsers. It includes a collaborative whiteboard, chat and all the necessary tools for a teacher may need. Unlike Zoom or Skype, BBB doesn't track your activity nor collect any data about you, and as it is libre and opensource, you don't need to trust their word, their code can be inspected to verify if it meets their claims (disclaimer: it does).
Jitsi Meet
Jitsi Meet is a multi-platform app that allows instant messaging, voice, video, screen sharing. It is a free and open source software that protects your personal data and conversation, it's also a great tool. It works on most devices and browsers, it just lacks a collaborative whiteboard.
Apache OpenMeetings
Libre and Opensource, Apache OpenMeetings is the go-to option for students having low bandwidth issues. It comes with all the needed tools for classes: videoconference, chat, whiteboard and much more. The only downside is the slightly old-fashioned interface which may require a bit of testing to get totally used to it.