Hi, Russ, I've been doing distance learning projects on and off since 1995. 1994 if you count a monstrously large (at the time) web tutorial. Time is ripe for a project to identify and evaluate the open source technologies useful for distance education. Perhaps funding can be sought for next year and work spread over a few colleges or universities?
I've used many of those commercial tools mentioned and it escapes me that there is so much focus on monolithic "solutions", often replacing a cheaper, easier to use, easier to maintain, more flexible and more powerful set of tools. Following a modular plan will give much more flexibility and functionality. Specific programs are not as important to Voice chat as are the school's choice of protocols. Choose an open protocol (e.g. SIP) and you get a choice of applications and platforms. Choose a closed protocol and your S.O.L. unless your vendor wants to help you. To start with WengoPhone, ekiga, kphone, YATE, Gizmo might give ideas about what to look for and where to search further. Same with text chat. Pidgin (formerly GAIM) is one of the best. Again the protocols are more important than the specific programs. However, most VOIP clients also include text-based chat. For whiteboards I've considered using just a plain old remote desktop connection. See KDE's krdc and krfb for one example, but there are others that work together. These seem to allow many-to-one connections and read-only connections. Again, its the protocol that's important, in this case rfb or vnc. Regards, -Lars --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
