Get to know open source online teaching software: BigBlue Button

BigBlueButton is an open source video conferencing tool tailored to online teaching. Let's see what it offers.

Working remotely from home is the new normal in 2020. Of course, you can't do everything remotely, but online teaching is okay.

While many teachers and school organizations are unfamiliar with all those great tools, some of the best open source video conferencing tools meet the requirements to some extent.

In the video calling software I mentioned, BigBlueButton caught my attention. Here, I'll give you a brief introduction.

BigBlueButton: An open source web conferencing system for online teaching

BigBlueButton is an open source web conferencing solution designed to simplify online learning.

It's completely free, but you'll need to install it on your own server to use it as a proven eLearning solution.

BigBlueButton provides a very good set of features. You can easily try to demonstrate the instance and install it on the school server.

(Recommended tutorial: Linux tutorial)

Before you begin, learn about the following features:

Features of BigBlueButton

BigBlueButton tailors a range of useful features for teachers and schools in online classrooms, and you get:

• On-site whiteboard
• Send messages to the public and private
• Webcam support
• Session records are supported
• Emojis are supported
• Ability to group users for teamwork
• Support the vote
• Screen sharing
• Multi-user whiteboards are supported
• Can host itself
• Provides APIs for easy integration into your web app

In addition to the features provided, you can see the easy-to-use UI, Greenlight front-end interface of BigBlueButton, that you can install when you configure it on the server.

(Recommended micro-class: Linux micro-class)

You can try demo instances to teach your students for free. However, given the limitations of using demo instances to try BigBlueButton (limited to 60 minutes), it is recommended that you host it on the server to explore all the features it provides.

(Recommended course: That's what Linux should learn)

To get a clearer picture of how these features work, you may need to look at its official tutorials.

Install BigBlueButton on your server

They provide detailed documentation that will be useful to every developer. The easiest and quickest way to install it is to use bbb-install script, but if it doesn't work, you can explore other options.

For new contacts, you need a server running at least Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Before you deploy a server for BigBlueButton you should review the minimum requirements.

You can learn more about the project on its GitHub page.

If you're looking for a solution for online teaching, BigBlueButton is a great choice.

It may not offer native smartphone apps, but you can definitely access them using a web browser on your phone. Of course, it's best to find a laptop/computer to access the online teaching platform, but it can also be used on mobile devices.

These are the introductions to open source online teaching software: BigBlueButton which I hope will help you.