Overview

The goal of the project is to design a Virtual Classroom Plugin for 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 will be a white board where the instructor can draw & write and chat facility(through Pidgin). He can also show them some videos if required.

Details

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

• Create separate class groups

• Allowing only specific buddies to add to the classroom

• Using chat to communicate with his students

• Using white board to draw and write something. This is as if he is writing/drawing on an actual whiteboard. This is going to be the core feature of this plugin. It will have the following features :
  • pencil tool
  • object drawing tool(triangles/circles/rectangles etc.)
  • color tool
  • eraser tool
  • ability to set line width

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

• If the instructor asks a discussion question, every student must supply an answer before he or she can see the answers of the other students. This is clearly a dramatic improvement over the face to face class where such discussions are usually dominated by the same small percentage of the students.

• Small video support. This can be done either by integrating flash or any other media player.

• Track which students are using the system and when did they join it.

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