Virtual desktops
I’m going to catch up with a small administrative task left over from yesterday, and then we’ll look at some ideas on how the virtual desktop can be shared among varied machines. For the past couple of years, the snowfall levels have kept me watchful – will the tendency to accumulate come to an end, so that we can return to more of a “barefoot in the park” lifestyle. To that end, I’ve been taking photos, and yesterday afternoon should have been one of those freeze-frames. Except that I was at work; my photo today is LATE, but the difference should not be measurable.
It’s been snowing for two days now, so the “snow-dometer” now is up to 545.4 cm and we love the stuff. With that out of the way, let’s continue.
Next year, the provincial education system is altering the mathematics courses offered to senior high school students. Since this directly involves one of the boys, I was wide awake and interested during the school board meeting last evening. Here’s the crunch; math teachers are rare, and this will call for even more of them. One possibility involves distance education. With the new whiteboards we’re installing, I wondered about shared desktops and one teacher, multiple sites. Note to me: research.
This afternoon, I took IrishMoss (the XO) and installed a VNC client. With a VNC server (TightVNC) on my XP laptop, XO was able to wear the same expressions as XP. Magical, if only because it might be useful for something. There’s nothing technically challenging about this. But, what if I could run the server and then watch it on multiple clients. Let’s say, with a math teacher in Quebec City and students in front of those whiteboards in our outlying schools. With a videoconference agent, and some VOIP, this could be another tool in the inventory.
I’ve enough machines here at home to provide a testbed. Crap! So little time to play and so many interesting projects to pursue. If only my employer would suggest that I work from home for a few months.
