Multiplayer slides

[lylythechosenone]

This is a super far-off goal, but it's something I'd love to use in classes I teach. If you've ever used PearDeck, I mean something like that: students can provide answers to questions on the interactive slideshow, which will then show those answers on the teacher's screen. It could probably be implemented using a web server and websockets inside the WLJS app (on the teacher's computer).

[JerryI]

Unfortunately by the architecture of WLJS, it is not possible for multiple users to edit the same notebook at the same time.

However! I would prepare presentation using WLJS with interactive elements, then export it as HTML. In general with some minor adjustments interactive widgets such as Manipulate, Animate and etc are automatically compiled down to Javascript and embedded into exported HTML automatically.

The last issues to solve: how to communicate back from exported HTML to the teacher's notebook. Slides in WLJS do support <script> tags, and by the default Wolfram Engine freeware license provides an access to DataDrop, which also has web API. This means, one can simply write a basic fetch request to a single DataDrop, while on teacher's PC there will be something like Refresh[DataDropGet[..]//Plot, Quantity[5, "Seconds"]].

In general you do not need to write all of this every time. Slides in WLJS support components approach, so it can be just a sort of basic Import or something like that.

I would convert this issue to a discussion and provide you an example later with such system, if you want :)

[JerryI]

Here we go:

requires WLJS Notebook >= 2.8.4

(please change the extension to .wln)
Interactive Polls.json