I played with RealVNC once and couldn’t get it to work, but this sounds like a compelling reason to try again. Scott says using TightVNC (Virtual Network Computing) "you can share a view of your desktop (and any running applications)
with multiple other users simultaneously using the VNC server without your viewers having to install any software." Doesn’t quite sound like a super simple operation, but might be worth exploring a little further. Anyone out there using VNC to share their desktop with their distance students?
Link: EdTechPost: Thin-Client Desktop Viewing with VNC.
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4 Responses to “EdTechPost: Thin-Client Desktop Viewing with VNC”
Doesn’t count as a student use, but I use VNC all the time to share a computer with another programmer in California. Combine that with an open iChatAV videoconference and it’s almost as good as being in the same room.
Thanks D’Arcy, but knowing you and the kind you hang out with, I suspect the person on the other end is also quite familiar with VNC, and you guys are probably sharing each others computers. Any experience with what Scott describes: just having an outsider point his browser at your IP address to see what you’re up to? I’m still reading the TightVNC documentation – maybe I’ll give you a buzz to test if/when I get it figured out.
Truly, it is as easy as I describe for the student – open a web browser, point at the URL provided, and then sit back and watch.
In terms of setting it up, really the only trick is if you are behind a firewall/router (and that’s not VNC’s fault, it’s common of anything that uses particular ports). As proof, I am about to start a session with 10 or so folks all looking at my machine at once using only their web browsers, and the instructions I sent out basically included a URL and a password, and that was it. Give it a try, I promise it is painless.
Thanks Scott, I did get it working and it was indeed easy-peasy. The one caveat though is to remember to disable the remote mouse and keyboard (unless you’re really trusting). I didn’t do that initially and had a nice little time wresting the mouse away from my test subject so I could stop the share! 🙂 So something like this would be most useful if you had the student on the phone at the same time, or on Skype so you could talk about what you were doing as they watched. How’d the session with 10 go?