Forum LAMS for Tech-Heads - General Forum: Re: Advice on how to communicate with an external tool


 
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3: Re: Advice on how to communicate with an external tool
In response to 1 10/31/08 12:57 PM
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Well, im not sure what you mean with skypecast.... but the idea is to have a tool that the teacher can use as any other tool, to create video or audio conferences between the learners (the teacher would also be able to participate). It would work, for the learners, very much like the chat tool.

I dont think this can be done by making a webapp, or just using a tool for lams, cause the skype client is installed on the users pc... so ill be using an external app, thats installed on the learners computer, to communicate with the skype client. The learner, as part of the activity, would download a file (e.g. a xml) and the app would get the info for the conference session from that file.

So my problem now is how to get the info for that file, and how can i make it available for the app...If the case was, that when the teacher starts a lesson the server writes a file with the info on what the users and groups are, then i could just put it for download and have the app interpret it. But of course, thats not the case, its not that easy, and thats why im thinking of going straigth to the DB (wich i rather not).

So, any advice will be apreciated..thanks a lot!

Posted by Daniel Romero

4: Re: Re: Advice on how to communicate with an external tool
In response to 3 10/31/08 03:20 PM
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Hi Daniel,

Skypecast used to be a service from the Skype guys that allowed people to get together (using skype) with just a link. Unfortunately, I just found out that skypecast are not longer available :-(

However, have you seen Dimdim? It's a video, audio, share desktop and presentation application that doesn't require anything but a browser. It's quite good and we've been working on a new LAMS tool for it with their help. You can have a look at the following animation. Here you have more info. It has an open source version as well which you can use with less than 20 simultaneous users.

For Skype, do you have the format of the file that the learners need to download and that info needs to be included in that? for what you are saying what we need is user data and I guess the skype username for the learners? anything else?

Ernie

Posted by Ernie Ghiglione

5: Re: Re: Re: Advice on how to communicate with an external tool
In response to 4 11/03/08 03:21 PM
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Hi Ernie,

AS for the format of the file, it can be a txt or a xml...it makes no diference cause the app im building is gonna read it and take the info from there...but i guess xml would be fine.

The info that would be on the file is about the users, what are their user names, their groups, who will be talking to whom. For starters, ive thought of having the learners using the same username both in Skype and lams.

You said that the tool would know the users as well as the sessions for each group...could you elaborate on that? How can i get the info from the tool? any tip would be highly apreciated...if you know of any kind of diagram it would be great too...

Posted by Daniel Romero

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