Boardcast

A boardcast is a transmission of an electronic document via networks (e.g. the Web) which allows multiple users to observe the changing of the content process. It can be used as a means of E-Learning. The term boardcast compares with the related term screencast; whereas screencast demonstrates a GeneRally read-only content, a boardcast is essentially a collaborative action, often involving some form of feedback from the audience.

Uses

Boardcasts are useful tools for showing a live, online process of creation of something, e.g. a drawing or a program code. You can find a whiteboard or a realtime board as an independent web application for drawing or client-side web-development or maybe code samples live demonstration. A simple scheme of the process of boardcasting is creating a board like and sharing its URL with the audience.

Technology

Since boardcasting involves deep level of interaction between network hosts, it relies on asynchronous requests (e.g. AJAX) or some full-duplex communications protocol like WebSocket. Implementation of multiple-clients interaction on the PHP platform is similar to ordinary chat implementation. i.e. via periodically performing AJAX requests to server. Vice versa, on the Nodejs platform the same task can be achieved easier via Sockjs.

See also

• Screencast
• Online lecture
• Slidecast
• Video podcast