Acoustic network AGORA education APAAS product smart class has been upgraded to V1.1.0 version. Agora Smart Classroom can help educational institutions and developers to launch their own brand, full-featured online interactive teaching platform in 15 minutes at the fastest, saving 90% of development time. As of March 31, the number of registered users has exceeded 1000, the number of supported classes has exceeded 500,000 / month, and the total number of students covering the world has exceeded 4 million.

In the new version of Smart Classroom, we address the previous “UI is not easy to modify” the problem, the UI code and business logic isolation, and provide UI Kit, so that developers can more easily modify, add UI controls. It ensures low code development and provides greater flexibility for customization.

At the same time, in order to allow you to replace, add some functional modules of the smart classroom, or even for their own business needs to add functional modules, we have also added a custom plug-in function, namely ExtApp. You can be like building blocks, some of their own classroom functions, such as countdown, rush to answer, etc., to join the smart class.

Next, let’s talk about the new features and optimizations of Agora Smart Classroom in V1.1.0.

Class UI customization is more flexible

In terms of the new version of the UI, we made two upgrades. First of all, we redesigned three sets of UIS for 1-to-1 interactive teaching, online interactive small class and interactive live large class scenarios. Developers can use it directly, deploy it online. At the same time, we also separated the UI code from the core business logic and provided UI Kit so that developers could modify the interface more in line with their own brand tone on this basis.

When modifying UI based on UI Kit, developers do not need to understand the core business logic of Smart Classroom. Simply modify UI components based on the UI Kit we provide, and you can adjust the color of the interface, the size of the menu bar, the position of ICONS and buttons and other functional modules of the UI. The Ui-Components directory under the Agora-Classroom-SDK contains the rules for composing all the UI components. You can also add other UI components here, or adjust the overall layout.

As shown in the figure below, this is the default UI for Smart Classroom.

After custom modification, the classroom interface can present a completely different style. As shown in the figure below.

Extapp is used to flexibly expand the classroom functions

In this update, we have further opened up the underlying code of the Smart Classroom and provided a custom ExtApp plug-in. You can think of Extapp as an add-on to the Smart Classroom, which allows developers to embed their own functional modules in the Smart Classroom as plug-ins based on their actual needs. Each Extapp has its own separate lifecycle and data management.

For example, if you are in class and the teacher wants the students to solve a problem within a given time, you might want to include a countdown function in the class. This “countdown” can then be embedded in the Agora Classroom SDK as a plug-in.

There are three steps to achieve this. First, you need to inherit the AgorabaseExtApp class and implement a custom plug-in in your App. The AgoraExtAppBase class contains methods to initialize the plug-in and update properties, etc., for details, please refer to the documentation.

Second, after you implement the plug-in, you can register the plug-in. Need to call AgoraEduSDK registerExtApps method, the plug-in registered to Agora Classroom SDK. Taking the countdown plugin we just talked about as an example, the following code shows how to register a countDownextApp:

// AppIdentifier: The Plugin ID will be used to identify the Plugin. The same Plugin must use the same ID for different platforms. // ExtAppClass: Container AppClass Type, created by the SDK. // Frame: The size of the plug-in container, representing the distance from the underlying view. The underlying view is generated by the Classroom SDK (without the security area). // language: Container language, the Classroom SDK will pass this variable into a specific plug-in container so that the container can set up multiple languages itself. let countDown = AgoraExtAppConfiguration(appIdentifier: "io.agora.countdown", extAppClass: CountDownExtApp.self, frame: UIEdgeInsets (top: 10, left: 50, bottom: 10, right: 50), language: "useful") / / plugin icon, used in UIKit layer set, the default will be on the whiteboard toolbox toolbar window display. countDown.image = image countDown.selectedImage = selectedImage let apps = [countDown] AgoraEduSDK.registerExtApps(apps)

Once the second step is complete, the countdown becomes a plug-in to the Agora Classroom SDK.

The final step is to start the plug-in.

By default, successfully registered plug-ins are displayed in the Toolbox pop-up in the Smart Classroom whiteboard toolbar. If you want to customize an entry for the plugin, you can modify the corresponding file in the UI Kit module we mentioned above to add an entry for the plugin in the three scenarios of Smart Classroom, and then call the following method when the plugin is clicked or displayed.

// Pass the plug-in ID in the willLaunchExtApp method. extAppContext? .willLaunchExtApp(appIdentifier)

At present, we provide an example of the countdown function plug-in in the sample code. You can search “Smart Classroom” in the audio network document center and consult the detailed documents to get it.

New page recording, what you see recorded is what you get

In the online education scenario, course recording is an absolute rigid-demand feature. In February this year, VoiceNet launched the page recording service, which can record audio and video, whiteboard, courseware and chat information all at the same time, and does not bring additional bandwidth and performance overhead. The recording process does not affect the RTC interaction experience of any anchors or viewers. And after recording, you can generate MP4 files in real time, compatible with mainstream players.

Smart Classroom V1.1.0 added support for page recording, can specify the URL page content and audio mixed recording into an MP4 audio and video file, to achieve audio and video content, whiteboard content, courseware content synchronous recording. Developers can configure and initiate page recording through the RESTful API of Smart Classroom Cloud Service. Please refer to the documentation center of Voice Net and search for “RESTful API of Smart Classroom Cloud Service”.

Management of newly added courseware

In order to improve the classroom learning effect, the new courseware module is added in V1.1.0 of Smart Classroom. Teachers can upload documents in PPT, DOC, PDF and other formats through the Smart Classroom Client. The Smart Classroom client will enable file conversion by default for files with suffixes such as “PPT”, “PPTX”, “DOC”, “DOCX” and “PDF” to be displayed on the whiteboard in class. Developers can also configure and upload files to cloud disk through the RESTful API of the Smart Classroom Cloud Service, and obtain the change events of the cloud disk files in the classroom. Please refer to the Archive Center of Sound Net, RESTful API of the Smart Classroom Cloud Service.

In V1.1.0 Smart Class, the files uploaded to cloud disk are stored in Agora’s Aliyun OSS account by default. If developers want to store files in their OSS accounts, they need to update the JSON configuration object of the whiteboard in the Agora console APAAS configuration, as described in the Agora console configuration agile class section in the prerequisites for agile classroom.

V1.1.0 also supports courseware preloading. Add CourseWareList and PersonalCourseWareList fields to the Agora Classroom SDK’s launch method to preload courseware assigned by educational institutions and uploaded by teachers. After successful call, the client will cache the courseware in the cloud disk to the local. See the audio network document center, Agora Classroom SDK API.

In addition, Agora Education APAAS Smart Classroom v1.1.0 also added new functions such as user list, class reward, roll call, class status, etc. For details, please click “Read the original” to understand.

Based on SD-RTN™, a software-defined real-time network developed by Agora, LingyingClassroom can identify network anomalies in real time and accurately based on deep learning algorithm, realize the “zero awareness” fault switching mechanism for users, and provide escort for high availability of services. At the same time, we also for Southeast Asia, the Middle East, North America and other foreign teachers in the country and domestic small and medium-sized cities, do exclusive network optimization, end-to-end quality transmission rate is higher than 99%. In the subsequent product iteration, we will also add more functions for the smart classroom, providing better development flexibility. If you have any features you need for the Smart Classroom, please feel free to post a comment to us at rtcdeveloper.com.