Comments on: Is there softare to project a screen to other PCs?

Question: Is there softare to project a screen to other PCs?

Jairus — Mon, 29 May 2006 05:57:20 -0800

Is there software that will let a user (say, a teacher) broadcast the contents of his computer screen to a number of other users (say, students), so that all the screens are showing what the server's screen is showing?

By: bwilms

bwilms — Mon, 29 May 2006 06:06:44 -0800

You could use something like NetMeeting to accomplish this. All the clients would call the server, and the server would share its desktop or the application you want people to see. I'm pretty sure newer versions of Windows/MSN Messenger have similar features.

By: ed\26h

ed\26h — Mon, 29 May 2006 06:14:44 -0800

UltraVNC is free and should work fine for this. I assume this is PC/Win32

By: killyb

killyb — Mon, 29 May 2006 06:25:44 -0800

use windows media encoder, broadcast the contents of your screen and have all the students open that stream. need bandwidth and vnc might be better, but just another idea

By: davey_darling

davey_darling — Mon, 29 May 2006 06:30:44 -0800

At my school we use an application called Netsupport School. It does exactly what you ask (among other things, the most useful I find is being able to monitor and control individual student machines).
Looks like they offer a 30 day free trial as well.

By: fvox13

fvox13 — Mon, 29 May 2006 08:33:40 -0800

My middle school used PCAnywhere for this, but any VNC client (RealVNC, TightVNC, or UltraVNC) would be free, and work just as good, if not better. You could also just abandon the "control their screens" idea and buy a digital projector, since it would be the easiest option.

By: FreezBoy

FreezBoy — Mon, 29 May 2006 08:55:25 -0800

If you're all using Windows XP, Application sharing is built in to Windows Messenger. You can read an article about it here.

By: funboytree

funboytree — Mon, 29 May 2006 09:07:20 -0800

NetSupport School gets my vote. Stable, easy to use and will work across wireless if required.

By: fatbobsmith

fatbobsmith — Mon, 29 May 2006 09:57:17 -0800

We use Glance where I work. One computer hosts and other computers can view the hosts screen by going to the glance website and entering in the session key. The system works fantastic for long-distance screen sharing.

By: hatsix

hatsix — Mon, 29 May 2006 13:57:14 -0800

VNC will work great, with control turned off, multiple sessions turned on.

I use UltraVNC (same as ed\26h), but I've also been pleased with Tight VNC. The BEST part is that it's completely cross-platform compatible, and completely free. You can set up shortcuts on the desktop to automatically connect to a computer, via the computer name or IP address.

Added Bonus: the viewer doesn't actually have to be installed on a machine, the vncviewer.exe file runs self-contained from wherever it happens to be...

By: Gable Oak

Gable Oak — Tue, 30 May 2006 08:02:13 -0800

You might be interested in something free and interactive like Classroom Presenter or, for entirely online classes, Macromedia Breeze.

By: Jairus

Jairus — Tue, 30 May 2006 13:35:18 -0800

At my school we use an application called Netsupport School. It does exactly what you ask (among other things, the most useful I find is being able to monitor and control individual student machines).

This is perfect, thanks!

(VNC would rely on the students to control if/when they see the instructor machine. I want it to be entirely under instructor control.)

By: ed\26h

ed\26h — Wed, 31 May 2006 03:11:32 -0800

(VNC would rely on the students to control if/when they see the instructor machine. I want it to be entirely under instructor control.)

The "disable remote input" option on the intructor's machine. But either way.

By: Jairus

Jairus — Wed, 31 May 2006 04:33:32 -0800

The "disable remote input" option on the intructor's machine. But either way.

You misunderstand. I want the instructor to choose if and when the students see the instructor's screen. I don't want the students to initiate the connection.

By: hatsix

hatsix — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 16:09:41 -0800

Following up:
Jairus: You can open listening connections, basically, the viewer sits on the student's desk, and when you open up VNC, you push your desktop to them (its meant to get around firewalls, but works for this as well)