Intellituts - Virtual Classroom Session with PPT Slides 2

Recording of another session conducted through Intellituts platform.

Intellituts - Virtual Classroom Session using PPT Slides

Here is another session of virtual classroom delivery via internet using powerpoint slides.

Whiteboard - Essential Element of our Teaching

Whiteboard (or Blackboard or Greenboard) is an essential part of our teaching. No classroom is complete without a whiteboard.

A teachers creativity in explaining any complex concept is accomplished by using  a simple tool i.e the whiteboard. Most teachers are extremely creative and talented as far as their graphic skills are concerned.
Most good teachers have great handwriting and excellent drawing skills. I am sure you would remember, your teachers who used the whiteboard to such an effect that they converted that boring white canvas into a portrait of pedagogic imagery with such ease that all looked crystal clear. No amount of multimedia and animation technology, can replace the magic that teachers create on the whiteboard.

So, be it online remote teaching methodology or physical classroom teaching, whiteboard is the most essential part of that experience.

Thus, I took upon a task of creating a low bandwidth whiteboard that could be used to teach online remotely. My whiteboard required the following essential features:

• Free flow drawing capability
• Real time sharing
• One Teacher -To- Many Students session
• Multiple simultaneous Teacher-Student sessions
• Paging
• Multiple colors
• Low bandwidth function

Low bandwidth requirement is the most important as you know it is a priority.

So, I set about devising methods to accomplish the fully featured whiteboard as per my needs.

Whiteboard Methodology:

To create a low bandwidth, real time sharing, multiple user, free flow drawing whiteboard, I decided to break down the functions of drawing into minimal actions set. So, when you use the mouse (or pen/tablet) to draw a figure on the computer screen, you do following basic actions:

• Move mouse to location on screen where you want to start drawing
• Press left button on the mouse to start draw.
• Drag mouse to actually draw
• Leave left button on the mouse to stop draw.

Using these basic four actions i.e MOVE, START_DRAW, DRAW, STOP_DRAW, you can create any figure including alphabets to write words and sentences or write mathematical symbols or draw flowcharts or graphs to explain co-relations etc.

So, all drawing can be done using these four actions.

Next step was to transport these basic actions in real time to another user who could see what was being drawn. After thorough research, I zeroed-in on flash technology and the power of Shared Objects as supported by Flash/Adobe Media Server. FMS provides a functionality to share information between various sessions in real time and at minimal bandwidth. So, I decided to send the basic actions along with screen coordinates through FMS shared objects to the student sessions. Thus, getting the basic functionality working.

FMS made it possible for low bandwidth, real time sharing, multiple user, free flow drawing whiteboard to be possible.

Further to add paging, I added some more actions like ADD_PAGE, NEXT_PAGE and PREV_PAGE.

and to add multiple colors, I added another action named CHOOSE_COLOR.

To get multiple sessions working together I used server side code to manage sessions and share information with relevant people connected only to that session.

Here is the demo of my efforts:

There are two flash components loaded here. On the top is the student view of the whiteboard, and at the bottom is the teacher view. You can use your mouse in the bottom view and see the drawing happening in the top view as well. Anyone else who has loaded this page and is drawing on the bottom view is also visible on your top canvas. Can you see any delay in your drawing the bottom view to it appearing in top view ?

Student View:

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Teacher View:

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Why another online teaching platform ?

Yes, I agree, It is a relevant question as to why do I wish to build this online remote teaching platform when several others are available on the internet and various companies have spent millions building such tools.
Could I do a better job then ?

Short Answer:

India suffers from problems like:

• Low internet bandwidth
• Unreliable internet connectivity
• High Cost of data connectivity on mobile internet networks.

Most internet enabled remote teaching software solutions made in US fail to solve above problems as they are used to high bandwidth reliable internet connectivity. So, I wish to make a solution that caters to these needs of India and make self paced internet based learning a true reality.

Long Answer:

My answer to such a question is that all others who have built such a platform are primarily based in US or other countries where internet is not a problem. Some of them being Cisco Webex, Google Hangout, Skype etc. Our experience in India is that even today reliable internet connectivity is a problem. So, most companies in US fail to keep the low-bandwidth-unreliable-nature of our internet connections in mind while making these solutions. This causes problems in usability of these solutions in our environments.

My experience with these solutions has been less than satisfactory. Mind you, all these solutions are great and unmatchable in terms of technology, penetration and customer experience but they fail to perform in our restricted low-bandwidth-unreliable internet connections.

Some of us living in metros are fortunate to have broadband powered 1/2/4 Mbps connections but many in Tier II cities or others are not that lucky. It is still a struggle to get a 1 Mbps broadband connection in place, even more difficult to get it from a reliable service provider.

I live only in the suburb of New Delhi  (with-in National-Capital-Region (NCR)) and I still do not have any option to get a 1/2 Mbps affordable internet connection.

Thus, the motivation to build a platform that works on our bandwidths and could have reach to various regions in India where internet is still nascent. Could we do something to transmit live classes over low bandwidth internet in an affordable way ? Could we make it so affordable for internet enabled learning to be possible that anyone and everyone can have access to the resources to learn on their own at their own pace if they wish to ?

I wish to find answers to these questions and may be, provide an alternative to webex, skype and numerous other solutions that do not fit our needs by providing a tailor-made-india-specific online remote teaching solution.

Online Remote Teaching Session using Intellituts platform.

Here is a demo of the recorded session of a real classroom tutoring session through Intellituts platform.

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Welcome

Welcome to my blog on the making of Intellituts - A Remote Teaching or Tutoring software.

Intellituts is a platform that helps teachers break barrier of geography by teaching online from anywhere anytime. The platform enables teaching through internet and is specialized to work in low bandwidth environments like India and other such countries where reliable internet connectivity is still not guaranteed.

This blog is to connect with everyone who wish to use this platform for spreading knowledge and educating everyone else.