• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Videoconferencing

Jas

Illuminator
J
Joined
Jan 2, 2004
Messages
3,833
Hello!

I'm wondering if some of the brilliant minds here could help me out.

I'm looking into possibly starting some sort of educational outreach program here at the Aquarium, using videoconferencing to reach school that are remote, or just out of the geographical area covered by our other outreach programs.

Does anyone here have any sort of experience with videoconferencing, either as an IT professional, student, teacher or through work? If you have any ideas on where to start, companies to contact, etc, that would be really helpful. Or if you're aware of an institution in your area that does do videoconferencing, who are they? I'm trying to get as much information as possible on this, so any information or feedback would be appreciated.

Basically, I'm looking at:

1. What can we accomplish with this that we aren't doing now?
2. How many people are using this?
3. How many institutions use this to deliver their programs, and have they experienced any success with this?
4. What level of IT support is required?
5. What are the set-up costs?

That's all I can think of off the top of my head right now (I'm in the midst of moving offices, so most of my notes and stuff are packed up.) If you have more questions, please ask them, so that I can find the answers.

Thanks!
 
Jas said:
Does anyone here have any sort of experience with videoconferencing, either as an IT professional, student, teacher or through work? If you have any ideas on where to start, companies to contact, etc, that would be really helpful. Or if you're aware of an institution in your area that does do videoconferencing, who are they? I'm trying to get as much information as possible on this, so any information or feedback would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

I believe that the University of Colorado at Boulder has been running an engineering-degree via teleconferencing since the late 80s.

Anything I could tell you would pale next to their 20 years of experience.
 
I work for a bank and video-conferencing is how I do a lot of meetings with colleagues and sometimes clients. I have addressed seminar audiences via video and even interviewed people using the medium. The hardware my firm has is extensive and expensive but the quality still leaves a great deal to be desired. Very simple versions use gear like Avistar or NetMeeting but they are still worse.

IMO technology is not great enough yet for education programs to be effective. I would say you are better off delivering interactive content and videos through the internet. Sorry not to have more positive input . . .
 
I have no technical expertise to offer, but can back up drkitten by saying when I went to grad school in '88-'90 many people from the NSA successfully attended via teleconferencing.The university was George Washington University; I have no idea if they are still doing it.

The amusing bit was at the time NSA employees weren't allowed to say they worked for the NSA, but we all knew that the televideo feed was to the NSA. Truly wacky conversations resulted.
 
I haven't used it in a few years, but a company I once worked for used PictureTel (solution consisted of both hardware and software). The image quality was very good compared to other videoconferencing solutions that I have used, such as Netmeeting.

It looks like PictureTel was acquired by PolyCom. Here's link to a page on their site, that discusses educational videoconferencing solutions.

http://www.polycom.com/solutions/1,1694,pw-4733,00.html

I have no idea what the cost would be, but back when I used it (> 5 years ago), I think it was expensive.


I've also included a link to an MIT page, which describes which tools they use, including picturetel.

http://web.media.mit.edu/~federico/creativity/picturetel.htm
 
drkitten said:
I believe that the University of Colorado at Boulder has been running an engineering-degree via teleconferencing since the late 80s.
Click to expand...
Excellent, thank you! That's the sort of stuff I need - names of places that have successfully delivered these programs.

acuity said:
IMO technology is not great enough yet for education programs to be effective. I would say you are better off delivering interactive content and videos through the internet. Sorry not to have more positive input . . .
Click to expand...

Thanks for the names of the companies! There's actually quite a few schools up in the northern/remote regions who are using videoconferencing to teach classes to their students. I'm meeting with a woman on Friday who's in town on vacation, who's school uses it.
roger said:
I have no technical expertise to offer, but can back up drkitten by saying when I went to grad school in '88-'90 many people from the NSA successfully attended via teleconferencing.The university was George Washington University; I have no idea if they are still doing it.

The amusing bit was at the time NSA employees weren't allowed to say they worked for the NSA, but we all knew that the televideo feed was to the NSA. Truly wacky conversations resulted.
Click to expand...

Excellent, thank you, I'll look into it.

I just think it would be excellent to be able to deliver our interpretive and curriculum programs to the more remote areas, as well as enhance some of our existing outreach programs, which for practical reasons (such as the ones that focus on marine mammals), don't allow us to bring live specimens into the classroom.
 
imagineNoReligion said:
I haven't used it in a few years, but a company I once worked for used PictureTel (solution consisted of both hardware and software). The image quality was very good compared to other videoconferencing solutions that I have used, such as Netmeeting.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the links! That helps me out a lot.
 
roger said:
The amusing bit was at the time NSA employees weren't allowed to say they worked for the NSA, but we all knew that the televideo feed was to the NSA. Truly wacky conversations resulted.
Click to expand...

It's funny that you can always tell who these guys are, 'cuz when you're introduced to them and finding out a little about their work, they'll tell you "I work for a federal agency" instead of just teling you "NIST," "NASA," "NSF," etc. When pressed, it invariably ends up that they work for either the CIA or NSA. I don't know why they bother trying to hide it...

We tried to use videoconferencing a bit when I was involved with NASA Astrobiology in grad school, but it never worked quite as well as we'd have liked. I imagine the technology has come a long way since then. (No useful information for you here, Jas -- but I figure I should at least comment on the subject of the thread) :)
 
Last edited:
There's some technical information about the Singapore-MIT alliance here. They have classes that are taught either in Cambridge, MA or in Singapore, but attended by people in both sides.
 
CFLarsen said:
What's wrong with Skype?
Click to expand...
Skype is not that useful for teaching. It has only the most basic features.

The SMA system (that I mentioned in a previous post) broadcasts video from the teaching classroom to the remote classroom, synchronizes it with the powerpoint slides (so they don't go through video compression) and saves a combined video that can be downloaded after class. They have a camera for the blackboard/instructor and another for the students when they ask questions (very useful for the remote students).
 
We used VRVS for years (at CERN).
http://www.vrvs.org/index.php

1. What can we accomplish with this that we aren't doing now?
Typical application. Meeting room with conference/lecture. Dozens of people sitting at home institute in video-conf-room or at their desk. Input from remote web-cam to main conf-room and other participants possible, but was clumsy.

2. How many people are using this?
Dozens to hundreds.

3. How many institutions use this to deliver their programs, and have they experienced any success with this?

Last time I used the system, it was in the order of 100 institutions/groups


4. What level of IT support is required?

Not much. :-)

5. What are the set-up costs?

Depends. If you have a PC, a web-cam and a beamer cost is probably almost zero (education and research only). In the worst case... You have to get a baby, educate it, buy it a PC, a web-cam and a beamer... I don't know the price of a new baby (maybe a used one will do... I think you get the picture.... :-)
 
Unnamed said:
Skype is not that useful for teaching. It has only the most basic features.

The SMA system (that I mentioned in a previous post) broadcasts video from the teaching classroom to the remote classroom, synchronizes it with the powerpoint slides (so they don't go through video compression) and saves a combined video that can be downloaded after class. They have a camera for the blackboard/instructor and another for the students when they ask questions (very useful for the remote students).
Click to expand...

Teaching is first and foremost about being able to communicate. Skype is great for this, and it's free. A huge advantage! Name one educator who says he has enough money/equipment to teach, and I will show you a liar! :)

While there are big advantages of being able to integrate technology in teaching, it is also very important to be aware that your technology doesn't control how you teach. Powerpoint can be useful, but not if you use it like most people do: Use the templates, and just type in the stuff.

Tufte's paper on Powerpoint use is a real eye-opener.
 
drkitten said:
I think the Master's program at Colorado might disagree with you.
Click to expand...

Well I think this is going to come under the heading of two different things.

Videoconferencing by satellite and TV has been around for a long time - I used to do the set ups for this between Europe and the USA and it works very well.

It of course has one great disadvantage - it is hideously expensive.

Video-conferencing between fixed points with dedictaed circuits is very good quality wise but the initial costs are high.

From what the original poster was saying I assume that he/she is contemplating video conferencing over the internet. Where I work now we have video conferencing equipment, it is expensive and requires a lot of IT support. Video conferencing, as opposed to delivering video via streaming is a complicated undertaking unless he is thinking of the sort of webcam approach which is not all that useful for true videoconferencing.

If you check out the NOAA underwater lab they have a videofeed that uses MPEG4 and which gives some of the best live video feeds I have seen - in order to do that you do need good servers and great connections.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom