Using Jitsi for online summer camps (students 8-18 y.o.)

users
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Hi everyone,

I’m getting in touch on behalf of the Appalachian Institute for Creative Learning (https://www.appalachianinstitute.org/), a summer enrichment program for 8-18 year olds based in the southeast of the US. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we are unable to run our summer program in-person this year and are developing an online version of our programming. In doing so, we are in need of a secure and easy-to-use video chatting tool, for both the educational and social aspects of our summer camp. We were drawn to Jitsi because it is open-source, end-to-end encrypted, free, and available to use in a browser and without an app. However, before we decide to use Jitsi for our virtual camp this year, we would love to get some feedback from you on the following questions:

  • How many school or educational settings use Jitsi, that you are currently aware of?
  • What measures does Jitsi have in place to prevent unwanted attendees?
  • Can people be kicked out of a Jitsi meeting room?
  • Is there a way to prevent unwanted screen recordings?
  • Can we enable/disable share screening for some/all participants?
  • Can we mute participants?
  • Can we block participants?
  • How can we help parents understand the safety features and limitations of the platform?
  • How do you protect your cloud infrastructure, back-end communications, and service operations?

Lastly, I’ve seen that you offer quick-install packages for creating one’s own Jitsi server on Linux operating systems - do you have any similar quick-install packages for Windows operating systems? I am doing most of the technical set-up and maintenance for our virtual camp site, and I am currently working with a Windows 10 Pro operating system with the Windows Subsystem for Linux installed (Ubuntu). Does this mean I can follow the quick-install instructions for Ubuntu?

Apologies if I’ve missed a post here or in the FAQ that already deals with these questions, and many thanks in advance for any advice or assistance!
Cheers,
Danbee

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(learning institution)

about the free service, here is the quote at meet.jit.si:
Go ahead, video chat with the whole team. In fact, invite everyone you know
This is as it sounds; it’s a service for meeting between pairs. It is NOT aimed at education.

About hosting, IMO it’s way to complex to justify a summer camp; the investment would be useless the rest of the year. Find a hosted, paying service.

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Based on posts here and personal experience, several dozen, probably hundreds. I see at least 20 new messages a day asking server questions for small, medium and large deployments.

You can protect meeting rooms with a password and use authentication to only allow users with proper access to create, manage or attend meetings.

Yes.

Yes, the default “Quick install” does not provide such a feature. However, keep in mind there many desktop screen capture applications that can just record the screen and audio, no matter what restrictions you have in place in Jitsi Meet.

Not to my knowledge, not without custom development on the server components.

Yes.

Not to my knowledge, not without custom development on the server components.

They are very much the same as others. Jitsi Meet is very flexible and can be configured in many ways. Most people will bypass or workaround most technical restrictions in creative ways. Setup rules and enforce them by removing access, this is out of scope of JItsi Meet.
Many online resources exist. If you are using Jitsi is such an environment, check your local privacy laws, children and Internet access (<13y old need parent consent ? etc.). Perhaps consult a lawyer for this.

This would be a probable question for a commercial provider. https://meet.jit.si is not intended for commercial use (IMO), it has specific settings, limitations and restrictions that will make it unsuitable for your use.
In general Jitsi Meet as a GNU/Linux web application requires an environment managed by knowledgeable system administrators.

No. You could, however, setup a virtual machine in VirtualBox for Windows and run Jitsi Meet from there. This is not a click and go install, it still requires GNU/Linux systems administrations and basic networking knowledge.

To my knowledge you may run into licensing issues. In terms of support and community help I haven’t seen any setups like you describe (using WSL). I suggest using Debian 10 in a VM in VirtualBox if you have no other options. This, however, will not scale to much more than a few dozen users. Consider hosting on a VPS, or on-demand on Amazon AWS.

As someone else mentions the cost (and learning curve) may not be worth it especially for a non-permanent install.

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