Overview

Welcome to lesson 16 of 19 in the Trainer's Course. In this lesson you'll learn how to connect to an external computer such as an interactive whiteboard and view its output on your own screen using the SuperNova Connect & View feature.

You'll learn about the steps a teacher must follow to give you permission to view their screen and the steps you must follow to complete the connection. Once connected, you'll also learn about the options available to adjust and magnify the image so that you have a comfortable viewing experience.

Lesson objectives

After studying this lesson, you will be able to:

• Correctly explain the steps a teacher must follow to permit their screen to be shared with SuperNova Connect & View.
• Correctly explain the process you must follow to enable SuperNova to view the image from a teacher’s computer screen.
• Correctly state how you may enable the tracking of the teacher’s pointer during a presentation.

This lesson should take no more than twenty minutes to complete.

This lesson applies to:

• SuperNova Magnifier.
• SuperNova Magnifier & Speech.
• SuperNova Magnifier & Screen Reader.

Note that the reference to the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) function within this lesson does not apply to SuperNova Magnifier. SuperNova Magnifier does not include OCR capabilities as this is a speech function.

How it works

With a simple setup process, a student using SuperNova can connect and view the output from a teacher's computer on their own computer screen. This allows a student with a visual impairment to more easily follow what is being presented in a lesson, making it easier for them to learn alongside their peers.

To achieve this requires:

• The teacher’s computer to be running a Virtual Network Computing (VNC) software program. VNC is an open source application that provides screen sharing services and is available for most operating systems.
• The student to be running a version of SuperNova supporting "Connect & View". The student does not require VNC as the connection is managed by SuperNova.
• The teacher and student computers to be sharing the same local area network (LAN).

IMPORTANT: SuperNova "Connect & View" enables a student to view the output presented on the teacher’s screen. The student cannot interact or affect the teacher’s presentation. The student’s viewing is passive, equivalent to viewing a video feed.

Dolphin Whiteboard Wizard

If you are a teacher, trainer or support engineer and are running a Windows operating system and are seeking a free and simple solution to the VNC setup, then the Dolphin Whiteboard Wizard will guide you through the setup process and provide you with options to control student access.

Watch the following video to learn more about the Dolphin Whiteboard Wizard.

As mentioned in the video, you can obtain the Whiteboard Wizard by visiting the following webpage – https://info.yourdolphin.com/whiteboard-wizard.

Configuring SuperNova to connect to an interactive whiteboard

To recap those steps you need to follow to make a connection:

1. Ensure your teacher is running the VNC program. If they have installed the Dolphin Whiteboard Wizard, then they just need to run the "Start Dolphin SuperNova Whiteboard Assistant" desktop shortcut.
2. Open the SuperNova Control Panel.
3. Open the "Connect and View Settings" dialog box (ALT + V, N).
4. Open the "Whiteboard" tab.
   
   
5. If you are creating a new profile, select the "Add" button and complete the required fields. Give the new profile a meaningful name such as the classroom name, enter the teacher’s computer name in the "Machine name" field and password in the "Password" field. Your teacher or system administrator will be able to explain if other field values are required.
6. Select the profile you want to connect to from the "Device" list and choose the "OK" button.

Turning on the connection

To enable "Connect & View", do one of the following:

• Select the "Connect and View" option in the "visual" menu of the SuperNova Control Panel (ALT + V, O).
• Select the "Connect & View" button from the “Visual” tab of the SuperNova Control Panel.
• Use the assigned keyboard command.

When you turn on "Connect and View" a portion of your screen shows the feed from the interactive whiteboard. As described in the previous lesson, you can change the size and position of the window, jump between your whiteboard window and your desktop with CAPS LOCK + MIDDLE MOUSE BUTTON and use the toolbar options to control the appearance of the image.

You can magnify, pan, rotate, change the colours and capture the image using the Toolbar options. You can also choose to track the movement of the teacher’s pointer by selecting the "Track presenter" option in the Toolbar.

When you choose to track the presenter, the image will automatically scroll to follow the teacher's pointer movement around the screen, stopping only temporarily if you move your mouse pointer. You can prevent the tracking of your teacher's pointer by disabling this option. You may wish to do this if you want to examine your teacher’s slide at your own pace.

Tip: You can also choose to view the teacher’s mouse pointer on your screen by selecting the “Show Mouse" check box in the Whiteboard Device "Settings" dialog box. Enabling this option means you can view the movement of your teacher’s mouse pointer, however, this may prove to be a distraction, especially if you are also viewing your mouse pointer within the window.

Before ending this lesson, it is also worth giving the "Lock image" option a repeat mention. In relation to a whiteboard presentation, the "Lock image" option enables you to pause the current slide, enabling you to examine the slide in more detail, at your own pace, without the possibility of the slide changing. However, be aware that when you do unfreeze the screen, the image will jump forward to the current slide on the teacher’s screen.

Exercises

Please complete Exercise 14 in the SuperNova for Trainers Workbook.

If you have not downloaded this supplementary document, please click here to download the SuperNova for Trainers Workbook. 

Summary

In the previous lesson you discovered how to connect, view and magnify the output from a digital camera onto your computer screen with the SuperNova "Connect & View" feature. In this lesson you learnt that you can use this same feature to connect and view the output from an external computer screen such as a teacher's interactive whiteboard through a VNC.

You learnt that the process requires a VNC program running on the teacher's computer, which is simplified through the use of the Dolphin Whiteboard Wizard and that the teacher has full control over who can view their computer screen.

Through the SuperNova "Connect & View" feature, you can magnify, change the colours, lock and capture images from the teacher's presentation and choose whether SuperNova follows the teacher's pointer or track your own movement within the Viewer window.

If you would like to learn more about the benefits student's can gain from using SuperNova in a classroom, visit the Connect and Learn pages on the Dolphin website.

In the next lesson you will be reviewing Profiles. Profiles enable you to change the amount of speech feedback generated by SuperNova and Dolphin ScreenReader without having to make multiple individual setting changes in the Control Panel.

Quiz

Below are three sample quiz questions based on this lesson. Please spend no more than five minutes considering the answers to these questions.

1. VNC must be running on the teacher's computer for SuperNova to be able to connect and view the teacher's screen. Is this statement true?
2. A student who is viewing the teacher's computer screen through SuperNova's Connect & View feature can affect the teacher's computer. Is this statement true?
3. You can capture images presented on the teacher's screen, such as a slide showing homework tasks, using SuperNova Connect & View. Is this statement true?

End of lesson

Thank you for completing this lesson. Please select 'Next Lesson' below to continue to the next part of this course.

To revisit a previous lesson, please scroll to the top of this page and choose the lesson from the Course Outline menu.

But before you move on, here are the answers to the quiz questions:

1. True.
2. False.
3. True.