Web conferencing plugins (including BigBlueButton)

Hi Andrea,

An open source answer is on its way.  Check out Robin Good's blog on this alpha product.

-Tom

What about ePresence? http://www.ePresence.tv.

It's open source. They already work with ATutor. There is a consortium. A basic membership runs about $450. You could probably get them to let you join for free, seeing that you're a Titan in the Open Source Education Universe.

 

Hi Andrea,
I am a homeschooling mom, and home education advisor.
I have been using web huddle for a while and really enjoy it.

You can use their's or host it one your own server.
www.webhuddle.com

Aisha aka muslimah4allah
muslimah4allah@msn.com
www.qiblacademy.org

Have you tried Elluminate Live? It has all the features you mention, except video, not sure if its added by now.


There's a wonderful moodle integration plugin available for it too (single sign on etc, meeting comes up as an activity etc) that I bellieve works marvellously (http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=56959)

www.remote-learner.net even has moodle+elluminate pre-integrated hosting.

Thanks,
Rajesh

Hi Andrea,

Dimdim Integration with Moodle is ready and the Dimdim Moodle Integration pack is available at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=176809

Dimdim is added as an activity within moodle and Dimdim Web meeting can directly be invoked from the Moodle itself. Please tell me if you face any problems/issues.

Thanks and Regards,

-Rajesh

A couple of other "any options" follow here:

We're currently using GoTo Meeting and leaning toward Adobe Connect as a replacement (saving $10/month).

Our organization has been looking and looking and tried all kings of stuff. Shareware, freeware, commercial software, open source... I think that what is truly needed for this Open Source Learning Management System is a free and Open Source web conferencing tool that can work on various platforms and with no need to install client side stuff . The companies that develop such tools can use the model of Red Hat, Apache and Moodle, and can do well financially by offering fee for service support, hosting, customization, enhancements and training. This is kind of the model of DimDim. DimDim appears like a very promising application and a lot of people have been kind of holding their breath waiting for a stable version to come. So far, we have seen a lot of delays, and I must say I am getting a little skeptical... after all the hype. Also, the product is kind of disappointing from a cross-platform support point of view, and due to the fact that it seems to crash less on windows platforms and browsers versus open source OS and browsers such as Linux and Mozilla (based on our own test). Unfortunately, and because of the frequent crashed, at this point, we had to decide to remove DimDim from our production servers and to hide the items that would have allowed students to use it for current courses.

At this point, there seems to be one application with very little marketing by a lot of features to offer. As I was searching over the last couple of years, I kept running into it and kind of discounted it because of all the noise with other up and coming apps. I think that this community aught to give a more serious look at WebHuddle. Unlike many commercial and proprietary apps, and just like DimDim, WebHuddle does not require installation of client side plug-ins. It supports session recording (both screencast and audiocast). For the audio, I understand that one may have to use it with other VoIP tools (http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Open+Source+VOIP+Software, Skype, SIPPhone or any other other). Hopefully, some work can be done soon on the audio side.

If giants like Google use WebHuddle for Webcast, that says something about the credibility of WebHuddle http://webhuddle.sourceforge.net/demos/32/file_playback.html

So my recommendation and support for any tools that integrates and complements Moodle is to look for free OpenSource, multi-platforms web conferencing tools that do not require installation of browser plug ins (this limits a lot the need for support and troubleshooting of students computers). And in the category, I have not seen much that is currently been offered and active besides DimDim (still in Alpha) and WebHuddle (has been in Beta for a while). Once again, while there is a lot of marketing efforts with DimDim (just looks at all the (sometimes redundant) post from the company on this forum), we should not ignore alternatives such as WebHuddle, even if they may be weak in marketing, and possibly (and momentarily) on the audio and for lack of instant integration with Moodle. There are ways to work around these two issues. In regard to Moodle integration, until somebody comes up with an activity plug-in, it is not difficult to just create an HTML link for students and teachers to start a conference.

If anybody has feedback on what I just wrote, I would be very glad to hear about it.

About the DimDim integration, does it works only once installed a own server or does it works also with the hosted version??

Did you check out WiZiQ's Live Class mods? see here: http://www.wiziq.com/downloads/moodle/

You can use Dimdim Moodle pack to start video , audio conferencing

You can use the following URL to download the pack - http://www.dimdim.com/products/dimdim_integrations.html

Hello,

I would like to make a reference to our product Thinsy Virtual Conference - http://www.thinsy.com/c/conference

The Thinsy Virtual Conference product is designed with Virtual Classroom applications in mind.

Features includes

1. Multi party video conferencing
2. High definition audio conferencing with telephony bridge (SIP)
3. A dedicated shared desktop
4. Classroom dedicated chat

The client is any browser with Adobe Flash installed. No software download or install is required, even for the Instructor. Windows, Apple Mac, and Linux desktops are all compatible with the Thinsy Virtual Conference.

We've designed our product to use a dedicated desktop running in your own cloud for the Classroom. This enables the Teacher/Instructor to keep all his private email, IM etc. out of the class. It greatly improves usability of the product.

Finally, our one touch record enables the Virtual Class to be recorded. The recording consists of the Instructor video, conference audio, chat and the shared desktop. The recording can be uploaded to any web server, and viewed on any browser with the Adobe Flash plug in installed.

Thanks,

Jagane Sundar

Founder, Thinsy Corporation

I am using a new open source video/voice/chat/desktop sharing application called BigBlueButton. It literally took 10 minutes to setup on a ubuntu server and it has been rock solid. I have found this to be the best integration in terms of setup and ease of use. There is a moodle plugin that allows a teacher to add a conference to the course as well.

I have tried DimDim, Open Meetings, and Covad in the past. All worked to varying degrees and required a lot of technical expertise to setup. BigBlueButton was installed by typing in 5 command lines.

It is WELL worth a look at: http://www.bigbluebutton.org/

I highly recommend WebConference.com's Moodle Plugin

http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/CONTRIB/component/10592

Allows Video Conferencing, YouTube Videos, PowerPoint, Document Sharing, and much more.

Openmeetings has the the great Moodle plug-in. We can install Openmeetings for you.

"There is no need to create any new web based conferencing system as there are already big players in this market such as WebEx, gomeetnow, gotomeeting, RHUB appliance etc. They provide both Technology and Support required for web conferencing.  However, If you really want to do it yourself, you may consider to use the following technology built in browser:
1. Flash
2. WebRTC from Google, which only applies to Chrome though.
3. Or develop plug-ins in C++ for different browsers. This is the most expensive direction but also is the most flexible direction."