Big Blue Button Review

Big Blue Button Review

by Sam Mudle -
Number of replies: 6

I just started using Big Blue Button recently with a hosting service.

Last year, I used Skype with Mikogo for a free web conferencing solution with about six students. I used Teamviewer when Mikogo was down (which was often in the last few months).  I've also trialed the newest version of Elluminate.

Just an overview:

Skype/Mikogo Problems:

  1. Can't tell who needs help by raising virtual hand.
  2. Skype doesn't allow someone to join an existing conference call.  You have to close the current call and then call everyone again.
  3. Not easy to mute specific people.
  4. Skype group screen sharing is expensive.  Everyone has to be a "premier member".  Hence you need Mikogo.
  5. Mikogo has been unreliable at times... difficulty connecting.
  6. Skype's OSX client has been less than stellar - frequent disconnects.
  7. Mikogo has problems when screen sharing with multiple monitors (as of August 2011)
  8. Mikogo for OSX will make you lose focus when a student points on your screen during your presentation.  Annoying bug.

Teamviewer has a broadcast option that works quite well with a small group of students.  However, you can't easily make someone else a presenter so that everyone can see their screen.

Big Blue Button.

Problems:

  1. Can't control someone elses mouse via screen sharing.  Sometimes I want to help fix a problem or type something but I cant.
  2. Voice not as good as Skype's -- slight delay.
  3. Screensharing a bit slower than Teamviewer.
  4. No breakout rooms like Elluminate has.  That would be nice to take a large group of students and instantly move them into smaller groups where I could move between rooms to give them help.
  5. Next version of BBB will have pdf/ppt recording but no screen sharing recording like Elluminate has.
  6. When screen sharing, students can't create a pointer to point at something on my screen.  I really liked how Mikogo does this and missed it badly in BBB.  In fact a pointer for each student in a different color appears in Mikogo.

Awesome things I've noticed about BBB right off the bat:

  1. Voice/Cam/PDF sharing/Screensharing all in one.  Don't need to install a client for Voice, and one for Cam, One for screen sharing, etc.
  2. As long as your machine runs Flash, you are in.  I had students in Linux Mint, OSX, Windows, IE, Firefox, Chrome with no problems.
  3. Localization works great.  I had a Chinese student that enjoyed this aspect.
  4. Interface VERY clean.  I kinda wish there was a settings button at the top for Flash.
  5. The PDF doc sharing works EPIC.  Anything can be converted to PDF so that means BBB can work with any document.

First time wierdness with BBB

  1. Some students didn't understand how to share their screen when made them presenter. 
  2. Some students didn't know how to maximize the screen sharing.
  3. Opening the Flash settings during the screen sharing process can lock up BBB.
  4. Flash wouldn't always pick up the correct sound input... Students didn't know how to right click and choose settings to do this.
  5. I'm not sure how to whiteboard without uploading a blank PDF file... is there a way?thoughtful

This was our first time using BBB so at the end the students were generally positive about it after they figured out how to share their screen.

I'll make more use of the PDF sharing next time.

 

 

Average of ratings: Useful (2)
In reply to Sam Mudle

Re: Big Blue Button Review

by Fred Dixon -

Hi Jeremy,

I'm one of the BigBlueButton developers and on behalf of the others, thanks for sharing your feedback.  I've responded to your feedback in-line.


> 1. Can't control someone elses mouse via screen sharing.  Sometimes I want to help fix a problem or type something but I cant.

We've not had a lot of request for adding remote control in screen sharing, but your use case is good.  We've been focused on improving the core capabilities for the moment, such as record and playback.


> 2. Voice not as good as Skype's -- slight delay.

We have worked on improving the audio in the upcoming BigBlueButton 0.8.  See http://groups.google.com/group/bigbluebutton-dev/browse_thread/thread/3c7ce9815a9800c3.


> 3. Screensharing a bit slower than Teamviewer.

Screen sharing is one of the weakest part of our product.  We opted to use Java to capture the screen.  On the positive site, our desktop sharing will work on Mac, Unix, or PC clients -- as long as you have Java installed.  Only the presenter (the person sharing their screen) needs Java.

On the downside, Teamviewer and others install native code and can thus hook into the underlying OS to optimize the screen sharing.  


> 4. No breakout rooms like Elluminate has.  That would be nice to take a large group of students and instantly move them into smaller groups where I could move between rooms to give them help.

It's a good request, but we have others (such as record and playback) that are taking a higher prirority.  It's on our road map for 1.0.  See http://code.google.com/p/bigbluebutton/wiki/RoadMap1dot0


> 5. Next version of BBB will have pdf/ppt recording but no screen sharing recording like Elluminate has.

We are getting close to a release of BigBlueButton 0.8 beta which will have recording of slides + audio.  The target use case for BigBlueButton is to share slides (PDF).


> 6. When screen sharing, students can't create a pointer to point at something on my screen.  I really liked how Mikogo does this and missed it badly in BBB.  In fact a pointer for each student in a different color appears in Mikogo.

Good suggestion ... we are targeting BigBlueButton for on-line classes for 25 users or less.  How would this work if you have twenty students in a session?  Are you sessions primarily smaller groups?


Feedback on the first-time wierdness


> 1. Some students didn't understand how to share their screen when made them presenter. 

There's two overview videos we recommend you have all students watch.  It will give them a quick look at the capabilities of the viewer and presenter.  See http://bigbluebutton.org/sites/all/videos/join/index.html.


> 2. Some students didn't know how to maximize the screen sharing.

We'll look at maximizing a students view of screen sharing for the upcoming BigBlueButton 0.8 release.  


> 3. Opening the Flash settings during the screen sharing process can lock up BBB.

We'll check into this. 


> 4.  Flash wouldn't always pick up the correct sound input... Students didn't know how to right click and choose settings to do this.

We're working on a 'Audio settings' dialog to appear when students first join the audio session.  This dialog will help them verify they have working audio and choose the active microphone. We definitely want to make this process easier for students.


> 5. I'm not sure how to whiteboard without uploading a blank PDF file... is there a way?thoughtful

We implemented whiteboard as annotations, so you need a blank slide to annotate.  


Thanks again Jeremy for your feedback.  Much appreciated.

Regards,... Fred

BigBlueButton developer

http://bigbluebutton.org

Average of ratings: Useful (2)
In reply to Fred Dixon

Re: Big Blue Button Review

by Sam Mudle -

Big Blue Button is so epic it makes me want to cry.

There is nothing with the product that is a show stopper for me.  The simplicity of the software reminds me of Jonathan Ive's Apple designs.

Twenty five people pointing at the screen would be too much.. you'd have to set a toggle for people, or create a queue.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Sam Mudle

Re: Big Blue Button Review

by Dan Humpherson -

I to am a big fan of BigBlueButton, I've done a bit of work on the skinning of said product - mainly just playing around with existing Flex/Flash themes which had already been developed and applying them to the BBB elements.

Slight learning curve for me having not worked with Flash/Flex for quite some time.

I've added a couple of screenshots for the themes I've worked on so far.

http://twitpic.com/6dj7ry (YUI Theme)

http://twitpic.com/6dj8a3 (Brownie Theme)

http://twitpic.com/6dj8na (Unassigned Theme)

Nothing to set the world alight but something different nonetheless.

Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Fred Dixon

Re: Big Blue Button Review

by Jordan Tomkinson -

We have a dedicated "test" BBB server set up at http://bbb.moodle.net which is tied to one of our development sites but it keeps falling over and has to be rebooted every few days (its the virtual machine provided by BBB themselvs).

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Jordan Tomkinson

Re: Big Blue Button Review

by Fred Dixon -

Hi Jordan,

Just tried to connect to you BigBlueButton server and wasn't able to join a meeting.

We have a cron job running on many of our BigBlueButton servers to reboot at 2am.   For some of our test servers, such

   http://demo.bigbluebutton.org/

we don't reboot it at all; rather, we monitor its health over many days to look for signs of problems.  

The BigBlueButton virtual machine (VM) is pre-set for 1G of memory.  Our demo server, for example, is a dedicated server with 2G of memory.  Is it possible to install BigBlueButton on a dedicated server at Moodle HQ?  I would be happy to help you setup and configure and do more testing.

 

Regards,... Fred

BigBlueButton Developer

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Sam Mudle

Re: Big Blue Button Review

by Geoffrey Robinson -

Hi

Just a word of thanks posting this. Am looking at this tool to intrgrate and found this v useful to know. As was the reply from Fred@BBB

Average of ratings: -