Teacher

Teacher Mode

When a user connects to the bbb-vnc-collaborate VNC server, it checks if that UNIX user is in the bigbluebutton group. If so, the user gets "teacher mode", a Hollywood Squares-type grid view showing all desktops on the system.

Once in "Teacher Mode", you can click on any student desktop to connect to that student desktop. Press "ALT-SHIFT-Q" to disconnect and return to teacher mode.

Right-clicking while in "Teacher Mode" pulls up a menu. Right-clicking on a student desktop gives you a "View this desktop" function, which works just like clicking on that desktop, except that you are in view-only mode and can not interact with the desktop with your keyboard or mouse. This is useful to watch an individual desktop full-screen without interfering with the person using it.

There is an option in the menu to "Deaf all viewers". Only Big Blue Button viewers (not moderators), and only those in the current meeting, are deafed. Deaf icons appear on the lower left of the user avatars in the user list.

If a viewer was deafed, when a teacher connects to that desktop, they will be undeafed for the duration of the connection, then re-deafed when you disconnect.

The idea is to deaf all the students when they are working on an assignment, then virtually "walk around the room", talking with each student individually while interacting with their desktop.

You can also screenshare a single screen to all of the students by right-clicking on that screen and selecting the screenshare option. A button will appear in the top-right corner to end the screenshare (only visable and usable by the teacher).

Desktops are persistent - they run until the system is rebooted. If you want to terminate a desktop, I tend to use the command sudo killall -u USERNAME, which kills all processes run by a given user.

The "Display Mode" option lets you limit the grid display to only those users logged in to the current meeting.

Multiple teachers aren't really supported yet.