Installing BigBlueButton on FreeBSD/PC-BSD

In the Official PC-BSD Blog, Dru Lavigne, Director of Community Development, blogs about the initial steps for setting up BigBlueButton on a FreeBSD or PC-BSD 8.1 system.

In the blog she wrote:

Once better tested, we’ll see what we can do about getting a BSD version of BBB. Creating a port/PBI will be interesting due to the amount of configuration.

We know the value of making pre-configured packages ... once its easy to install BigBlueButton on a specific platform, it tends to spread quickly.

Steve Boneham's Review of BigBlueButton

Thanks to Steve Boneham -- a consultant that offers research, development and training in web design, podcasting, digital video, social media & e-Learning -- for his very detailed review of BigBlueButton.

In his review he wrote:

The interface feels slick and less clunky than some other systems I’ve used.

We're trying to keep the interface really simple.

He also wrote:

At present, there is no way to record and playback sessions ... this is the most requested feature and is planed to ship with v0.8, although as with much OSS, the timescales for that aren’t set in stone.

We're working hard on record and playback. Stay tuned!

Comments from Chris Kenniburg

Chris Kenniburg, Web Master for Dearborn Schools (Dearborn, MI), checked out our beta WordPress plugin for BigBlueButton and in this recent blog post he wrote:

The BigBlueButton (BBB) web meeting/conferencing server is truly a gem in the open source arena. It installs effortlessly via a few simple console commands on Ubuntu and updates even easier.

Chris went on to say:

For a K-12 school district looking to offer web meetings without a big budget, BBB works GREAT!

Thanks Chris for the endorsement. We've built BigBlueButton for the distance education market, so in many ways we've built it for you!

BigBlueButton Video from Lancaster University

Dr Alastair Robertson, a research fellow in e-Science, Lancaster University Management School, has posted to YouTube a video showing how to use BigBlueButton in conjunction with Sakai 2.7.



Nice video Alastair!

Breakout Rooms in 0.71

A new feature appearing in BigBlueButton 0.71 will be the ability to create breakout rooms. A moderator in the meeting will be able to select users and redirect them to a new meeting room with just a few clicks.

This is useful in a situation where, for example, a professor wants to split a class up into smaller discussion groups.

The new module uses the BigBlueButton Integration API.