Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: A free educational live stream platform for kids

dexter.live

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 34 posts

Re: Show HN: A free educational live stream platform for kids

#21

Post by rexreed »

bvergara87 wrote: post #13
rexreed wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - very interested in what you're using for the tech stack. Why didn't Streamyard + Twitch work? What are your operating costs (if I can ask)? For the website, is this a custom site or based on something like Wordpress? Would love to know details!

Custom site, built on Vue, Quasar and Firebase. Streamyard + Twitch did work but lacked a lot of functionality we wanted. We built out a lot of realtime functionality like polls. We used Streamyard worked for a little bit but because we wanted to give our streamers only one view to mess with we went with Agora's API.

Cool. Are you still streaming to Twitch for the actual streaming?

Are you hosting replays? If so, how are you doing that?

Did you have to build custom software to do polls or was that something off the shelf?

Another Q: if you're streaming to Twitch (or YouTube), how do you prevent anyone with the link just watching the stream? Basically how do you control the registered viewing experience?

Sorry for all the Qs: you're being fantastic with responses!

Re: Show HN: A free educational live stream platform for kids

#22

Post by ArtWomb »

MichaelAO wrote: post #2

I work at a school with a campus in Texas and due to COVID-19, we created an interactive live streaming platform to connect kids with the world's best teachers in a fun and safe way. All of our live streams are free and open to the public. We were previously using a combination of Streamyard + Twitch, but had to make our own for various reasons. I'll see if our CTO will give a debrief of the tech stack on this thread…

This is cool. EdTech is undergoing unprecedented digital transformation right now. Anecdotally I can say the more personal the video interaction, the more instructive. And meshing one-on-one live video with live pair programming will be the holy grail ;)

On the coding side, I've had more success using P5JS than block-based and visual environments like Scratch. I think the great thing is that students can then advance on their own. Diving right into the API reference, The Nature of Code textbook and The Coding Train YouTube tutorials using state of the art AI techniques.

For live interactive video I use Twilio and WebRTC. But will also be experimenting with Mux soon. Best of luck!

Re: Show HN: A free educational live stream platform for kids

#23

Post by MichaelAO »

ArtWomb wrote: post #22
MichaelAO wrote: post #2

I work at a school with a campus in Texas and due to COVID-19, we created an interactive live streaming platform to connect kids with the world's best teachers in a fun and safe way. All of our live streams are free and open to the public. We were previously using a combination of Streamyard + Twitch, but had to make our own for various reasons. I'll see if our CTO will give a debrief of the tech stack on this thread…

This is cool. EdTech is undergoing unprecedented digital transformation right now. Anecdotally I can say the more personal the video interaction, the more instructive. And meshing one-on-one live video with live pair programming will be the holy grail ;) On the coding side, I've had more success using P5JS than block-based and visual environments like Scratch. I think the great thing is that students can then advance…

Agreed. It has been so interesting teaching via live stream (versus in the classroom). We've experimented with things like POV cameras and streaming in strange places (like a state park for an astronomy stream). Agreed with p5.js - we have a STEM Coding stream/course starting on Monday hosted by Dr. Chris Orban (https://u.osu.edu/stemcoding/)

Re: Show HN: A free educational live stream platform for kids

#24

Post by MichaelAO »

rexreed wrote: post #21
bvergara87 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Custom site, built on Vue, Quasar and Firebase. Streamyard + Twitch did work but lacked a lot of functionality we wanted. We built out a lot of realtime functionality like polls. We used Streamyard worked for a little bit but because we wanted to give our streamers only one view to mess with we went with Agora's API.

Cool. Are you still streaming to Twitch for the actual streaming? Are you hosting replays? If so, how are you doing that? Did you have to build custom software to do polls or was that something off the shelf? Another Q: if you're streaming to Twitch (or YouTube), how do you prevent anyone with the link just watching the stream? Basically how do you control the registered viewing experience? Sorry for all the Qs: you'…

No, we're using Agora's API for streaming. Twitch's API works well however we want to try to keep as much in-house for the exact reason you mentioned above in controlling the viewer experience.

We'll also be implementing their Cloud Recording functionality but that's WIP.

Yes, we used Firebase to build real-time polls and ChartJS to display said data.

Not a problem, if you want to continue the thread more long-form shoot me an email -> bryant(at)dexterlearning.com

(had to post for Bryant... HN throttled his comments/responses)

Re: Show HN: A free educational live stream platform for kids

#25

Post by kroltan »

Congrats on the launch!

However, if you plan to truly open this to the public, you should at the very least disclose what timezone your streams start at, or show schedules in the visitor's timezone. Under the most simplistic evaluation, the world has 24 of them!

Re: Show HN: A free educational live stream platform for kids

#26

Post by MichaelAO »

kroltan wrote: post #25

Congrats on the launch! However, if you plan to truly open this to the public, you should at the very least disclose what timezone your streams start at, or show schedules in the visitor's timezone. Under the most simplistic evaluation, the world has 24 of them!

Thanks! We use MomentJS Timezone to localize to your machine. We'll add something to make that more clear.

Re: Show HN: A free educational live stream platform for kids

#27

Post by MichaelAO »

MichaelAO wrote: post #26
kroltan wrote: post #25

Congrats on the launch! However, if you plan to truly open this to the public, you should at the very least disclose what timezone your streams start at, or show schedules in the visitor's timezone. Under the most simplistic evaluation, the world has 24 of them!

Thanks! We use MomentJS Timezone to localize to your machine. We'll add something to make that more clear.

Just deployed time zones. Thanks for the suggestion!

Re: Show HN: A free educational live stream platform for kids

#28

Post by sandGorgon »

MichaelAO wrote: post #2

I work at a school with a campus in Texas and due to COVID-19, we created an interactive live streaming platform to connect kids with the world's best teachers in a fun and safe way. All of our live streams are free and open to the public. We were previously using a combination of Streamyard + Twitch, but had to make our own for various reasons. I'll see if our CTO will give a debrief of the tech stack on this thread…

Are you using WebRTC for the streaming ?

How has been the experience scaling it to a large number of users ?

Re: Show HN: A free educational live stream platform for kids

#29

Post by kroltan »

MichaelAO wrote: post #26
kroltan wrote: post #25

Congrats on the launch! However, if you plan to truly open this to the public, you should at the very least disclose what timezone your streams start at, or show schedules in the visitor's timezone. Under the most simplistic evaluation, the world has 24 of them!

Thanks! We use MomentJS Timezone to localize to your machine. We'll add something to make that more clear.

Oh weird! I guessed so first, but tested changing my timezone and the times didn't change (upon reload).

Sorry for the false alarm!

Post reply on HN