What is Casting in Contribute Cloud 2.0?
Casting is the ability for a participant or a student to send the screen from their own computer up to the Interactive LED at the front of the classroom or boardroom, wirelessly. This enables the participant or student to show something from their own computer screen to the rest of the group using the teacher or presenter’s LED. This is all done without cables and the teacher or presenter is able to switch between who is casting at the touch of a finger. There is also no additional hardware required.
What is different about Casting in Contribute Cloud?
Casting in Contribute Cloud is somewhat flipped. What do we mean by that? Well, with traditional casting, the student or participant would have control when they cast up to the LED. They would also need to connect to a 3rd party piece of hardware such as a Chromecast Dongle or an Apple TV. What is different about Contribute Cloud is that the ability to control who is casting and when is all done by the teacher or presenter. Also, there is not additional hardware needed for casting, just a simple browser plugin to be installed.
What is Multi-Casting?
Multi-Casting is the term that we have coined for displaying more than one participant’s screen on the LED that is casting at the same time. The participants are able to cast independently of each other and the presenter or teacher is able to switch between who cast’s in full screen just with the tap of a finger. It really is a cool feature if you are looking to do some comparative work at the LED. Whilst Contribute Cloud 2.0 is able to show more than one screen at once, 4 screen can fit on the LED and if you have more than this (there is no limit) then the presenter can scroll through the screens and double click on the one they want to show.
It is also possible to select all your participants in this mode, or choose a selection or participants to display on the LED. Simply, put a check next to their name and then and to a compare window.
What do I need to install to be configured for Casting?
To use casting successfully on the Interactive LED and Contribute Cloud 2.0 software, we suggest that you use either the Chrome Browser (our preferred browser) or you can use Firefox too. Other browsers are supported for viewing and collaboration, but do not support the casting functionality. In Chrome, you need to install the Contribute Cloud browser plugin from the Chrome Extensions Store.
To be practical here, if you have lots of classes that are going to be using Chrome and Contribute Cloud, you want to centrally install the plugin so that the students or users don’t have to. This is a straight forward process I am told that can be done through the imaging software that you use to manage Chromebooks in bulk.
Once you have the plugin installed, restart Chrome and you should be all set.
How do I cast my Students or Participants?
First, your students or participants need to join your session. If you are not sure how to do this, then you should read this section of the manual.
When your students first join your session, they need to click to make sure their screen is selected, and then click on the Share button.
In terms of the student or participants involvement, this is it. This is all they have to do. The rest is controlled by the teacher or presenter. The teacher or presenter can now navigate to the “participants” window where they will see who is in their session and available for casting. You click on the people icon and the image below appears. If you see black screens, check that you have a good internet connection that is running well, and also that your firewall is configured to allow access to the casting server – read all about that here.
To cast a student, simply double click on their screen preview. To close the cast window, you need to tap the scree, then click on the “X” (icon in the middle) at the bottom right had corner of the screen.
To add all your participant to multi-cast, click on the add all button. You can switch between any of them by simply double clicking on their screen preview. Use the process above to exit out each time.
If you would prefer to select a group to cast, you can do that too. Put a check mark in each participant then add to compare – it is as simple as that.
What is Teacher Cast?
Contribute Cloud as the name suggest, is cloud-based. Huge advantages as I am sure you are well away in terms of nothing to install or maintain. However, what happens if you navigate away from your browser window whilst hosting a session? Well, that depends if you have teacher cast running or not. Teacher cast allows you to cast back to your students or participants the entire contents of your screen. This means, that if you want to show them the content of say an Excel spreadsheet or a different webpage, they are able to see this directly from their own device through Teacher Cast. This is a powerful tool to be able to use 3rd party website and 3rd party applications with Contribute Cloud in a session.
If you would like to try Contribute Cloud – why not visit https://contribute.cloud for your free 14 days trial.
