Look-Over-Your-Shoulder Tool

Dongmin Kim

Look-Over-Your-Shoulder application provides integration of the VNC screen sharing capability with Tango Interactive session control. It seamlessly integrates TI event sharing collaboration model with the ability to share a screen of arbitrary machine with all or selected participants of a TI collaboration or distance learning session.

VNC provides the basic functionality enabling platform-independent screen sharing between machines. The machine willing to share the screen and (optionally) access to the keyboard and mouse must run VNC server. One or many VNC clients can then connect to this server so that their users can see the screen of the remote machine and can use it's graphical interface as they would be using it locally - modulo network delay and generally lower performance (slower response time).

VNC is typically used in two situations: (1) one can remotely use the machine, for instance for system administration access. This is a very important application for PC platforms which do not support functionality equivalent to the UNIX X Server. (2) It is possible to use VNC in the CSCW application context, i.e., one can run an application on one machine and have it seen or manipulated by multiple remote machines.

Our integration of VNC with Tango Interactive framework addresses both these aspects, and it adds all necessary session managemnt, access security, and local and remote application startup capability to the usual VNC features. Together, TI and VNC provide a truly break-through flexibility in using screen sharing as a component of a multi-function collaboratory system.

Tango Interactive supports two application modules using VNC as a component: Look-Over-Your-Shoulder (this application) and Share-A-Screen (find it in your application menu!). The remainder of this help file describes Look-Over-Your-Shoulder functionality.

Look-Over-Your-Shoulder lets the instructor, collaboration session chairperson, or a support person to see and (optionally) manipulate the screen of other participants of Tango Interactive collaboration or distance learning session. This functionality is used to (1) enable instructor or chairperson to observe hands-on work done by students or meeting participants; and (2) provide support personnel of the ASP site with a tool to troubleshoot session problems or to help users to learn how to properly use the entire collaboration or distance learning setup.

NOTA BENE: Look-Over-Your-Shoulder is ONLY available on PC machines. UNIX support will be added eventually.

Starting the Look-Over-Your-Shoulder application session:

Bugs, caveats, limitations:


TANGO Interactive support group
Last modified: Mon Mar 6 14:42:03 EST 2000