VNC
Using VNC in Classroom
VNC allows the instructor to control the mouse & keyboard of students' computers from the instructor's computer. The students' computer screens are displayed on the instructor's display.
This could be helpful in the following ways:
- Troubleshooting - If a student is having trouble, or needs to be sped up, the instructor can display the student's computer on the projection screen, and show other students how to work around the problem.
- Showing other students' work - If a particular student does something interesting on their computer, then the student's screen can be put up on the projector display for all other students to see.
VNC Installation
We experimented with using VNC for the classroom computers, and were able to view and interact with a student computers display.
Here are the steps performed:
- Download X11vnc on the student machines. This is the “server” software that serves student machine's screens to the instructor. NOTE this step was performed using Synaptic Package Manager, so the following step is not guaranteed to work.
# As root, apt-get install x11vnc
- Download xvncviewer on the instructory machine.
# As root, on instructor computer. apt-get install xvncviewer
TODO: Try xtight, per matthew's recommendation.
: I can't find anything for “xtight”, I found “TightVNC”. however, it can't connect to an existing X session. http://www.nabble.com/connect-remotely-to-current-session-td14747536.html#a14755042
Using VNC
On the students' machines, run the following command:
x11vnc -many &
Get the IP address of the students' computer. On the student computer, run the following command, and pay attention to what its IP address is:
ifconfig
IP address will be found in the paragraph that starts with “eth4”, and will be something 192.168.0.xxx
On the instructor machine, connect to the student's computer by issuing the following command, where <IPADDRESS> is the student computer's IP address found in the above step.
xvncviewer <IPADDRESS>
