Hi,
I am new to the group and I am sorry if I bring up a topic that has been discussed already (I haven’t been able to find any thread on this): has anyone worked an the integration between Gibbon and any Open Source videoconferencing system? This is certainly a hot topic in Covid-19 times…
Hi Enzo, welcome to the Gibbon community 
Good question and certainly a timely issue. This discussion came up among our developer group, and I’m sharing @jimbo8098’s response here with his permission. It possible for someone to develop this as a module for Gibbon, but there are a number of considerations for anyone taking on a project like this:
It's possible but could be difficult. One could potentially add such a feature to the classes on the system which would just link to some video conferencing software of the school's choice though there are other issues with that:
1. Authentication: One must be aware that details of such a meeting may be personal, especially in relation to younger children. It should be worthwhile to add authentication which would require SSO to be used for the best UX. An argument could be made for the user simply logging into the conferencing provider but that doesn't seem as nice to me.
2. Legality: It may not be legal to have younger people create or use accounts on such services which will depend on the country.
3. Situations: When should video conferencing be allowed? Should that purely be on classes or other things. The work increases as the use case does most likely.
4. Longevity: How useful will it be post-covid?
5. Popularity: Is it a popular request? It would be interesting to see some stats on how many people are asking for it.
6. Permissions: Some users, perhaps for personal reasons, may not be able to or allowed to use devices which should be kept in mind. If there's no need for them to have access they shouldn't have it. In any case this should be an eventuality considered as schools may see students misbehaving in their video conferencing and wish to ban them from using it.
7. Providers: Which provider do we use? Some countries ban or will ban certain conferencing providers. Do we use specific ones and reduce dev allocation or do we allow the user to do this, potentially causing confusion over what's needed. Depending on the provider this may be simple but people should bear in mind that the provider may require authentication before being able to log into that link.
In short, it's quite a difficult request. Whilst not impossible, I think it might be a difficult one to make a reality without a full focus. Any feedback on the above?
It's not so much to put the feature down or anything, just stuff to think about since if we want to make it and do it well they need to be considerations imo.
Hope this helps give some food for thought. I don’t believe anyone is actively developing a module for this, but as an open source platform, it’s always an option.
We use 8X8 which allows us to embed the meeting unlike zoom and teams and the others. Teachers sign up for their 8x8 account and embed their meeting into the lesson planner. We then embed either Microsoft or google forms for quizzes and test. The student never has to sign up for anything just enter their name for the 8x8 meeting and never leaves the planner section.8x8 also allows to now live stream to youtube.
Hi Raymond this sounds like a really interesting way to do it. Thanks for sharing!
jitsi is an opensource confrencing system that may turn out to make a great module. If it could some how be integrated in the unit and lesson planner that would be good.
Hi, any update about this topic . .
Hi nugie. Our core roadmap does not include this functionality, for the reasons shared in a previous post. Many video conferencing tools do enable creating links or embedding the video itself, which teachers could add to a lesson plan to help students join online classes.
Hi dont know if this is helpful. I am not an expert on the topic but i have done the same using the module of moodle found in the extend topic of Gibbon. Gibbon users can login into moodle with the the same username and password once moodle and gibbons database is sync is done. And in moodle there is a module to integrate jitsi for video conferencing. For security only the users registered in gibbon can login to the moodle with the same username and password. But drawback is moodle uses a lot of resources and the jitsi module has to be installed on your moodle sever. So bandwidth consumed will be a lot and also moodle uses a lot of resources.
Hi dont know if this is helpful. I am not an expert on the topic but i have done the same last year using the module of moodle found in the extend section of Gibbon. Gibbon users can login into moodle with the the same username and password once the moodle and gibbons database sync is done. And in moodle there is a plugin to integrate jitsi for video conferencing. (jitsi.org) https://moodle.org/plugins/mod_jitsiFor security only the users registered in gibbon can login to the moodle but u have to do the grouping in moodle. The drawback is moodle uses a lot of resources and the jitsi module has to be installed on your moodle sever hence bandwidth consumed will be a lot.
Guess there may be better ways using sign in with google and then link it to google meet, or sign in with microsoft and share a ling with miscrosoft teams. But again u will have to do the setting up of classrooms etc.
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