Alice, this is a forest of questions rather than just one.
First, the copyright owner is entitled to restrict duplication and distribution, so you need to be sure you have permission.
Secondly, sharing an application without the support of the publisher of the CDROM is usually difficult, so start by asking the publisher how to do it and following their advice.
In general, my successes have come from these approaches, listed in order of difficulty:
1. If the publisher recommends a method, follow it.
2. If, after installation, the game does not require the CDROM installed, you need only install it on each computer that the learners might use.
3. If the game only works when the CDROM is in the computer, you need to copy the CD into a network drive and tell your computer that it is a CD drive. Use Virtual CD or similar.
4. If the learners' computers are out of your control, install on a terminal server (or Citrix or XPUnlimited, etc) and supply instructions for remote-connection to each user, but accept that the video and sound quality and synchonisation will be poor if the network connection is limited. To make it easy for users, you can place the connection settings in a script stored in Moodle. However, games designers often write insecure software that will not run on a well-configured server.
5. Apply market forces. In future, choose browser-based versions over installed versions, if possible. Choose open-source products over proprietary products, if possible. Ask publishers (through their marketing departments and shareholder forums) to produce network-based or platform-independent versions. Talk up the possibility of ongoing subscription revenue from educational institutions.
Good luck.
Russell
First, the copyright owner is entitled to restrict duplication and distribution, so you need to be sure you have permission.
Secondly, sharing an application without the support of the publisher of the CDROM is usually difficult, so start by asking the publisher how to do it and following their advice.
In general, my successes have come from these approaches, listed in order of difficulty:
1. If the publisher recommends a method, follow it.
2. If, after installation, the game does not require the CDROM installed, you need only install it on each computer that the learners might use.
3. If the game only works when the CDROM is in the computer, you need to copy the CD into a network drive and tell your computer that it is a CD drive. Use Virtual CD or similar.
4. If the learners' computers are out of your control, install on a terminal server (or Citrix or XPUnlimited, etc) and supply instructions for remote-connection to each user, but accept that the video and sound quality and synchonisation will be poor if the network connection is limited. To make it easy for users, you can place the connection settings in a script stored in Moodle. However, games designers often write insecure software that will not run on a well-configured server.
5. Apply market forces. In future, choose browser-based versions over installed versions, if possible. Choose open-source products over proprietary products, if possible. Ask publishers (through their marketing departments and shareholder forums) to produce network-based or platform-independent versions. Talk up the possibility of ongoing subscription revenue from educational institutions.
Good luck.
Russell