Screen Sharing finally available for Teaching in Second Life

The wait is over, and join.me has delivered. Screen sharing as a tool and function of distance education has come to Second Life. Once Second Life's viewer 2 came into being in 2010 and one could share websites with an audience, the final frontier for live teaching was sharing one's computer screen, no matter what is on it, for the most robust and interesting classroom experiences.

Join.me is free and way easy to use. Add this to Skype and companies like Citrix that offer GoToMeeting are in real trouble.  Join.me has no voice capability at this time but does have chat, which I think is in the Pro version.

Also of note is join.me has smart phone viewers which can see your screen as well. The service is free unless you add some features in which case, it becomes $30 per month which is steep for just a screen sharing software.

Here are some shots of my demo within Second Life:


This is showing on a screen in Second Life, at the Wyoming Entrepreneur island.

This is the screen at classroom 1.  Once loaded with a screen sharing session, attendees click on it once and start to see whatever is on the screen being shared.

This is what the screen looks like when an attendee clicks on the teaching screen inside Second Life, but nothing is being shared.  Note the tools at the top, showing on the computer screen only, of the person who will share his/her screen.

The above screen is now showing my desktop which currently has this blog being displayed in Internet Explorer.

Hopefully this software will stay around for a while but if not, another should take its place in this open source, open content movement we are blessed with.

Just imagine the teaching possibilities with this tool...