Virtual Classroom over Pidgin

Overview

The goal of the project is to design a Virtual Classroom over Pidgin. The instructor can add the students as buddies in his own classroom group on Pidgin. Whenever the instructor runs the classroom, the students can connect to it to get benefits from his lecture. The main features are a white board where the instructor can draw & write and chat facility (through Pidgin). He can also show them some videos if required. Multiple pages are also supported to enable presentation kind of lecture ..

Details

The instructor is going to run the Virtual Classroom for Pidgin on his own computer from where he is going to teach. Here are the things which he can do :

• Allowing only specific buddies to add to the classroom

• Using chat to communicate with his students

• Using separate class groups

• Using white board to draw and write something. This is as if he is writing/drawing on an actual whiteboard. This is the core feature of this project. It has the following features:
  • Pencil tool
  • Eraser tool
  • Color tool
  • Color Fill tool
  • Text tool
  • Line tool
  • Multiline tool
  • Arc/Oval/Rectangle? tool
  • Brush tool
  • Line Width tool
  • Color Fill On/Off? tool

This also removes the need of LATEX like plugins since most of the people do not know LATEX.

• Support for multiple pages which are editable and removable..

• Small video support. This is done by integrating a flash based player using open source Swfdec flash library.

Grading, Assignments, Handouts/Notes?, Notifications, Feedbacks, Self-tests can be given in the usual way.

Latest Development

• Adding a group to class

• Removing a group from class

Virtual Classroom

• Starting the classroom

• Instructor's whiteboard

• Student's whiteboard

Icons

- Teacher
- Student