[color=darkred]I teach foregin Languages using PC to PC. In additon to my student being able to hear me, I need to be able to show various illustrations (man, woman, colors, numbers, furniture peices, office equipment, etc.). I need to choose the illustration from my file of clip art, display it on my screen so that the student can see the same illustrations on their screen. The only company I know doing this is Interwise and you have to do it through their server.

If SKYPE can add this kind of component, it would be worth a monthly subscription fee, for businesses to do visual presentations and teachers to teach or lecture PC to PC. Then we really have a powerful tool! [/b]

You have a great Idea there I think that would help a lot with trying to learn other languages. It seems like since skype already does file transfers it shouldn't be to hard to implement. It could just transfer the image using it's already in place method of file transfer then display that image in a little window.

Hey desaint911 and Kodafox!

It is already there. It is free. It is called TightVNC. www.tightVNC.com

Or you can use a server based product (not quite free, www.prenternet.com).

For info on VNC: go here:
http://www.powermodeling.com/files/whitepa...20Documents.pdf

I hope I understood your issue. Let me know if I didn't.

Regards,

Bill

Hey bill,
I'm not sure if you did understand the issue because the program you suggested sounded like complete overkill to me. All we were talking about was sharing a single image at a time. Like a piece of clip-art or something. So for example you could show a picture of a key to someone who spoke no english and say "key" etc. You don't need complete view/control over your parters desktop to do that. Though that program does sound cool I don't think it's the right solution to the issue desaint911 brought up.
have a good day

Why not provide the images through a wizzard-like website?
Anybody using internet (prerequisite for skype) has a browser!
This way you cold even offer more information like small sound clips with pronouciation so people can also train when the teacher is offline!
With web-pages you could even provide much more information like spelling and textual explanation!

TightVNC is by no means overkill, esp considering his students would only need a viewer to see exactly what the instructor sees.

you can use it both ways, not just to control a desktop remotely

I use it all the time to share my desktop while doing video editing/compositing (need broadband for the video)

they even make a reflector, so he could run a small virtual class of 4 easily

and a buncha nifty tools, check out the site

http://www.tightvnc.com

Sure, they "could" just transfer images, but there's NO colaboration in that

and what if the person on the other end opens the wrong file?

a door becomes a key and chaos ensues!!

lol

skype coupled with VNC forms a virtual workspace that is very easy to learn, teach, and work in.


beats leaning over somebodies shoulder by a long shot...

I'm sorry I have to disagree I think tightVNC is overkill for the problem that was brought up. If all the instructor wants to do is show flash cards to the students why would the students need to see the entire desktop. I'm not proposing that tightVNC isn't a great program or even a great tool for teaching but in terms of integration with Skype I just don't see that ever happening.
As far as the person on the other end opening the wrong file that wouldn't be a problem because they wouldn't be opening files manualy. Skype could just have a little window added onto it called a "shared view" or what ever you'd like to call it. The instructor could request to initiate a shared view with a student, then the student would get a dialog that says "instructor would like to open a shared view with you" if accepted a window would pop up on both partys computers. Now the instructor could drag any image onto his shared view and the student would see it imediately (well after the file was transfered of course). Now this solution may not be as robust as tightVNC but again, as far as it actually being integrated into Skype I think this is much more likely.
have a good one

When they release the API for skype i am pretty sure I will make this myself depending on the services available trough the API. It would be nice if the api has features for streaming data between programs, not just files.