This is what I sent via email to Gentry so others can follow along, and add their own ideas.
Gentry Davies wrote:
Hey Robert, I can speak to the Arc questions. You are still able to use Arc with a self hosted instance of Canvas, and I can provide pricing for you if you message me at gentry@instructure.com.
You should also be able to have very low latency using hosted Canvas, are you using free for teachers outside of the United States by chance?
Currently, I am not "Using" Canvas. I set up a trial account, and am busy clicking around the UI checking things out.
It seems like a good fit for what I want, which is:
1) Audio/Video intro to a discussion class
2) a short quiz
3) discussion of #1 with a focus on plurals, articles (a,and, the..) and correct pronunciation of English. Simple present tense, and simple present continuous, as this is about 70% of English usage. This is the "Basic" class. Then an Intermediate class, with more tenses, and harder vocab.
BUT:
1) I am in Vietnam, we have 3 connections to the rest of the internet, two undersea cables which were cut, and an overland one through China..
2) the cables were fixed, but not the routing. I put some money into Vultr, cheap VPS's etc. and was happy with Pings to Tokyo at about 90 ms. But that changed last Wednesday to 250ms pings. Crappy for voice.. No Good. Singapore, 220 ms. Sydney for the win at 155 ms. San Francisco is 200 and steady. Tokyo routes via Singapore, according to Tracert, and Tokyo routes through Singapore. I am not making this up...
3) So, I need to host at least the BigBlueButton part of things. Maybe I can get the cloud version of Canvas setup to do this.
4) or host it all, but then I need an Arc license.
I want to start with 4 classes of 5 students, meeting twice each week. Cost to the students is $5 per hour lesson. Money is tight here, and I am in the poorest province (Thanh Hoa), the beach city for Hanoi people. I get FTTH 80 mbit symmetrical for about $15 per month through Viettel. I could get a multi-wan router and also get Vinaphone 50 mbit for about $12. These are the top two here, and cover about 50% of internet subscribers. A static IP addess is $2/month.. Then I could self-host BigBlueButton locally.
I can live well here with AC/ internet, large room, eat out all meals, beer out most nights, visas, etc, for $500/month. Gross income on the above setup is about $800/month. Not a huge budget for extras.. Need some cash for servers etc. I could teach more, but I must do server admin, create lessons, do marketing, etc. I only need to create the lessons once, then re-use them, giving more free time later. But for now, start small, and build it.
This got a bit long, but gives an idea of my situation.
Let me know what you think is the best way for me to proceed.
Thanks in advance!
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