Program - Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Abstracts

Michelle Brannen, University of Tennessee Libraries

Since it's conception in 2001, The Studio at the University of Tennessee, has been adapting services to meet the growing need for students working with media. Throughout these 5 years, we've seen an increase in the amount and type of video work taking place in classes on campus. To support this increased use of video we have expanded and adapted our hardware, services, training and outreach to support the growing demand. In this presentation, we will look at the services we provide to support students creating video and specifically at how we are trying to teach students to be media literate, not to just complete an assignment.

James Dellon, Gallaudet University

Gallaudet University has developed an online Video Library <http://videolibrary.gallaudet.edu> to preserve and share its rich collection of unique film and video materials related to deaf people, their history, language and culture. Based on the Telescope Digital Asset Management application, and supported by grants from the Mellon Foundation and North Plains Systems, the Video Library contains a growing collection of unduplicated programs, archival footage and visual histories, some of which have not been available to the public for many years. The application will be demonstrated, and a discussion of the workflow to prepare each asset will be presented. Preservation, digital format and metadata issues will be discussed. We will also discuss plans to use the search and cataloging functions for curriculum development.

Dave Devereaux-Weber, Division of Information Technology, University of Wisconsin--Madison

The Internet2/ResearchChannel Working Group focuses on all aspects of digital video applications from streaming to handhelds to interactive HD technologies. The group welcomes new members and interested parties for a whole range of applications that are changing campus infrastructure and expectations. Current discussions include digital assest management issues, testing with ConfXP, expansion of DVTS applications and uses, HD VOD, camera uses and selection and the DVGuide project which highlights high quality content. Please join the working group for updates on current projects and to participate in future digital video projects.  I2/RCWG is open to any member of Internet2.  There is no cost to be a member of I2/RCWG.  Membership in the Research Channel is not a prerequisite.

Esther Feldman, The Lookstein Center, Bar Ilan University

Why use video conference to bring teachers (remote teaching) into your school? What are the differences in the art of remote teaching and classic teaching? What type of training do the teachers need to teach effectively? What type of lesson planning should they utilize? Are there intrinsic differences between remote teaching and classic teaching? How can you insure that the students stay focused? How can the teacher insure that the lessons are educationally valuable and sound? Are the benefits to the school that are unavailable in the classic classroom setting?

These questions and many others were asked by The Lookstein Center team during the pilot year of the Remote Teacher for Jewish day school program. In 2006, The Lookstein Center and the Avi Chai implemented a pilot program to provide eight Jewish schools with the opportunity to benefit from a master Jewish studies educator for one school year via a video conferencing IP platform. The program became the impetus to create momentum and energy to further promote and develop the use of this technology in similar ways for use in Jewish day schools throughout North America. Educational teams observe the teachers from both sides to build a profile of the ideal Remote Teacher and together with the teachers, to design the optimal methodology for remote teaching to successfully impact on the students' learning.

Petr Holub, Ravi Paruchuri, Stacey Simmons, Tomas Rebok, Andrei Hutanu, Daniel Eiland and Milos Liska, Institute of Computer Science, Masaryk University

Louisiana State University with technological support from Masaryk University (Czech Rep.) has decided to launch a unique experimental class on high-performance computing taught by prof. Thomas Sterling in spring semester 2007. This class enables students of multiple universities to participate interactively using high-end multimedia technologies. The class uses low-latency interactive uncompressed high-definition video at 1.5Gbps and AccessGrid audio to connect LSU, Louisiana Tech University, University of Arkansas, MCNC and Masaryk University. In this talk, we will focus on the enabling technologies used, namely the video and audio (from both hardware and software perspective) and the distribution system. Supporting technologies---like streaming solutions using VLC, QuickTime, Webex---will be mentioned as well, as they are utilized namely to provide the content to participants connected via other than very high bandwidth networks. Because of problem with different start of semesters at different schools, a recording system has been developed that enables real-time storage of the uncompressed HD video and audio, so that the content can be replayed to the students in the original quality after the semester starts. The talk will also highlight the challenging issues that were encountered both before the course started and during its run, particularly focusing on appropriate audio setup.

Donna Liu, The University Channel, Princeton University

The explosive growth of online video over the past two years is both a challenge and an opportunity for universities. New technologies make it easier to showcase the intellectual activity on campus, yet it is harder to get noticed in the tidal wave of user-generated video sites. The University Channel has created a space in the new public media environment where people can find lectures that meet the standards of university-level research: peer-reviewed, well-researched, full-length presentations. The University Channel's mission was made possible by the parallel evolution of new media solutions such as podcasting, online videos, IPTV, and social networking sites. These have created both the means of delivery, and the audience for a whole new option in public viewing.

David Marquart, Global Nomads Group

Founded in 1998, the Global Nomads Group (GNG) www.gng.org, is a non-profit organization dedicated to heightening children's understanding and appreciation for the world and its people. Using interactive technologies such as videoconferencing, GNG brings young people together face-to-face to meet across cultural and national boundaries to discuss their differences & similarities, and the world issues that affect them. Global Nomads Group programs aim to: increase young people's knowledge of the world and its people; increase collaboration and dialogue between students of different cultures and nationalities; highlight critical world issues ranging from HIV/AIDS to global warming, to war; provide an educational framework in which students can become active leaders in their own education

Charles McMickle, Assistant Director for Technical Services, NJEdge.Net, New Jersey's Higher Education Network

NJVid is the statewide video network designed to serve all of the states education, information and cultural heritage organizations, from K20 to public libraries and museums. NJVid represents a state of the art networking design with a planned Fedora repository and a statewide management collaboration among three leading state consortia--NJEdge.Net, VALE--the academic library consortium and New Jersey Digital Highway, the state's digital cultural heritage initiative.

Debra Piecka, Duquesne University

Kindergarten classroom using interactive videoconferencing. Due to the lack of research about the impact of this technology in the early primary grades, this study will follow a qualitative research approach in order to provide more information about the processes involved. An ethnographic case study methodology will assist the researcher to observe and interpret the theoretical assumptions about the nature of schools as well as those of the instructors, the students, the culture of the classroom, and their general, contextual social life. The natural, classroom setting will provide a comfortable environment where the young children may speak freely in addition to meeting the requirements of a bounded social system. New methods of ethnography demand consideration about participants' voices and textual strategies. The voice of the kindergartners will be particularly important to determine how they make meaning of the technology involved, the content, and the collaboration experience. This research will serve as a pilot study to create prototypical design for an ensuing interactive videoconferencing dissertation. While the pilot study is not a design experiment, the essence of this research case is to build and test a potential design approach for the dissertation. Research is needed to explore how technological innovations affect learning in the classroom. Interactive videoconferencing represents a technology tool that has undiscovered potential in the school setting.

Bob Riddle, University of Michigan

The goal was to create a mobile, DV capable video collaboration tool from affordable, available components that is usable, reliable, and compelling. High quality video was desired so the "better than H.323" video choices were HD and DV. Low latency transmission was desired, thus uncompressed DV video was chosen and a Sony HandyCam is used as the video capture device. Good audio without "echo" was desired. While there are many devices that deal with echo cancellation, a ClearOne Chat 50 was chosen because it is affordable, extendable, provides good quality audio and compares favorably to other devices in the same price range. Since DVTS capability exists in the hardware (Comet PMC) and software, we chose the solution that required the least amount of hardware with the most common user interface. The DVTS freeware is being run on a Windows XP machine. A 22" computer monitor is used to capitalize on the ability to present an HD (high definition) perspective (16x9).

Fabian Romo, National Autonomous University of Mexico

Since 1993 several academic institutions started a huge project to interconnect themselves sharing video and audio in an interactive fashion, supported by the old dedicated links settled for the ancient Internet access. Four years later all those institutions, headed by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM, the largest university in Latin America), founded the National Videoconference Network for Education. This network was the base plate for the current infrastructure which works mainly over the advanced Internet links managed by the University Corporation for Internet Development (CUDI), gathering today over 150 higher education institutions with more than 500 videoconference premises all over the country.

However this network doesn't works only with videoconference (traditional H.323) technology. The intense collaboration among CUDI's associates have allowed to include other communication types, such as webcast, podcast and high definition video, distributed altogether between the most diverse users, coming from the scientific research up to fine arts students. A key factor for this success is how we have organized all those technologies integration. From digital recording to free access to repositories, the production chain has never stopped and now rises to more than 30,000 hours per year. This source of information has provided fresh contents for other non real time interactive applications, such as distance learning repositories of audio visual objects that could be retrieved and reused in a very extensive manner.

The goal of this proposal is to show the audience how a good combination of teamwork and audiovisual technologies have built a very useful network, showing how important digital convergence is keeping in mind issues such as accessibility, freedom for content creation and the incentives for technology improvement, even when budgets are not as big as is necessary.

Randy Winchester, MIT, and Prashant Chopra, CampusEAI Consortium/OSTN

The delivery of television programming and interactive services over a converged IP network-called "video over IP" or now, more frequently, "IPTV"-will be a critical IT service in higher education over the next decade. Based on MIT's IPTV experiences and on lessons learned by being early adopters on the front lines, MIT's Cable Television team will share some critical IPTV insights and the most important factors to be addressed to increase the likelihood of achieving success with an IPTV strategy.

Last updated February 19, 2007