At present time, email and web are the computing tools mostly used for remote collaboration among scientists. The idea of this tutorial is to present a web oriented collaborative platform called VRVS (Virtual Rooms Videoconferencing System) and promote its use inside the educational and research communities.
This tutorial is divided in eight chapters. The first chapter explains what is VRVS, for what it may be used, platforms and tools supported, and some other basic concepts like a �virtual room� and a �reflector�. The second chapter describes the one-time steps that must be followed by a user new to the system: registration and download of the software package. The next four chapters are dedicated to the Virtual Rooms interface, including detailed descriptions on how to book and join a Virtual Room, the chat system and the control panel, to launch different audio and video clients. Chapter six is focused on the different software and hardware clients that may be used to send and receive the audio and video in a conference, as well as the pros and cons of using each of them. Chapter seven describes the use of VNC, a tool that integrated in the system let the users share their desktops or local applications to other participants in the conference. The last chapter has the intention of supplying basic rules of behavior during a videoconference.
The VRVS system is available at http://www.vrvs.org
Questions and interruptions will be welcome at any point during this tutorial.