Virtual Topical Seminar 9/23/04
Tom McNeal
Note: this transcript prepared for possible submission for captioning.
1:38 Start time – PowerPoint slide is full screen. Title is "Using H323
Videoconferencing" and body says Team Leaders: Tom McNeal and Jorge
Maldonado
Tom McNeal: Ok. And once again we're using H323 videoconferencing.. I’m Tom
McNeal and Jorge Maldonado…. *static* … Can’t see anything. Can't see you right
now. I need you to ah click off and try again.
Jorge Maldonado: The audio's cutting off.
Tom McNeal: Ok, I can’t….just have a blue screen on your picture. I..I need you to see
if you can ah call back one more time and if we can’t get you then I’ll go on by myself.
Ok? Alrighty.
Alrighty! So here we are H323 videoconferencing. This just lets you know that problems
come in for everybody, even for me and Jorge who are..who hook up all the time. He’s
going to try and hook into us one more time and well see what happens with that. And if
not, we’ll go ahead and I’ll continue with this myself. I know I would rather have Jorge
with me, but sometimes you can’t be helped. So..so..we'll wait and see if he comes back
in.
Ok. While we're waiting, I’m going to go onto my next slide. And they say,"Why
Internet videoconferencing?" After some of the problems we’ve been having today you
would say, your going to say, "Yeah, why Internet videoconferencing?" Well, most of
the time it can work. And ah here he comes. He’s calling us...locking up. We got a blue
screen again, it’s not working so I’m going to have to disconnect from Jorge and ah go on
on my own. 'Cuz I don’t think we're going to be able to get through to him right now.
So, you want to use Internet videoconferencing because you can save time and money.
You're going to bring the expert to the classroom or office. And you can see and hear the
presenter at the same time. Not at, like today where we're not able to bring Jorge in, but
ah next time we'll be able to bring him here. Ok, one of the best reasons for using it is
you can observe an instructor in their own environment; where they have their own
examples that they can bring in, and that they feel more comfortable, and they are able to
give you a better presentation. It’s less intrusive to the classroom. Let's say you were
taking a class of students.
Ok, one more time. Hey, Jorge I can’t see you. I just have a blue screen. I’m going to
need for us to ah stop testing this right now. We’re not going to be able to hook up.
Jorge Maldonado: Ok
Tom McNeal: I’m sorry. I’ll ah…
Jorge Maldonado: That’s fine.
Tom McNeal: I’ll talk to you about it later
Jorge Maldonado: XXXX
Tom McNeal: Ok. Well if we had more time, I would go..we would go ahead and, and
ah work on it some more, but we, we want to go on with the presentation about the ways
of using videoconferencing. Ok, like I said it’s less intrusive to the classrooms, but right
now it didn’t seem less obtrusive..intrusive, but usually you could do a videoconference,
you could move a monetary machine into the classroom. You can turn it on and ah the
classroom, after a while, they forget that it's there; you're able to pan the camera back and
forth to see what’s going on.
You can use it for virtual tours. You can go to places you’ve only dreamed of going for in
the past.
You can do distance education. And now, and there’s times you may not have an
instructor that can ah teach a particular course at your university or your school. You can
bring them in, in ah over distance education. And you can provide remote support if
you're having some problems. You can hook up with a network person and they can
diagnose the problem that you're having over the videoconferencing system. One of the
best ways to do it is classroom to classroom. Where two different classroom that can be
across town or maybe ah
5:00 PowerPoint slide is full screen. Title is "Classroom to Classroom".
across the country can join together and collaborate on different projects. The teachers
also in each of the classrooms can work together on different projects. And ah students
can see how the other students are working. And they can bring new ideas that they
normally wouldn’t think of.
Virtual observation. This is something that we've been doing here at Kent State. Where
students at ah Kent State University have been able to look in on a class and see what,
how the teacher is ah performing her duties. And they can talk to the teacher before the
class; after the class is over, they can ask the teacher questions about what was going on,
what was happening at a particular time and they can give feedback one way or the other.
We've been using this ah using the Polycom systems.
Teacher collaboration. Teachers on different sides of ah, ah city or state or even the
country can work together. They may of not been able to get together in the past because
of time and distance, but using the videoconferencing system they can ah work together
any time they have a break. They can work together before classes, during a break or
maybe at lunch time, and maybe after classes, and meet whenever they need to or
whenever they want to.
Ah, virtual fieldtrips. Once again it’s getting more difficult for schools to let classes out
and travel across town to a museum or a zoo or a research center sometimes. Now more
and more of these research centers are having videoconferencing equipment. Using the
equipment that we’ve been working for, you can hook up to a museum and do maybe a
pre-visit before you go, then you can go there and ah look over some of the things that
you saw during your videoconferencing. And even have a post visit after you're done.
You can even go to places that you could never get to that are on the other side of the
country. I know in ah with some of these places there may be a slight fee but ah um it’s
far cheaper then actually going there and maybe if you're going to a place that you could
never get your classroom to go to attend.
Talk to an experts. Now this is something that is useful for not only the students and the
teachers, but also the administration in the school. The administration could hook up to
an expert and talk about a particular subjects that are ah of interest to them. Maybe
they're working on a problem of a school district or something. Teachers can hook it up
and do in-services ah at um you can bring the instructor directly into the school building
for the teachers for, for their in-service.
Now you may be wondering about ah, ah your bandwidth at any particular time. Well, if
these in-services are done after school, then you have the bandwidth of the entire
building. So in that way you're probably getting plenty of bandwidth to hook up anybody
in anywhere. So you can talk to the administrators, can use it to talk to people, to come in
for meetings, teachers can use it for in-services and also your admin.. administration may,
maybe you want to talk to your teachers in ah in a teachers meeting in this way. So there's
ah not only is it a good tool to use with students, but it’s also a great tool to use for the
administration of your school of a university.
Virtual topical seminars. That's what we're doing right now. We wanted to hook up to
more then just a few sites at once so we went ahead and ah, we created a virtual topical
seminar. Where we're streaming out the video over the web and for this to, to participate
in a virtual topical seminar, all you really need is a computer that has ah Internet
connection. And by using these two you can go ahead and ah reach ah many more people
then you normally could with a videoconference. We can also save these virtual topical
seminars for viewing later and we're also working on adding captions to this. Now you
might say that, "Well, I can’t do that.", but many of the universities that are a part of our
project have the ah
10:00 PowerPoint slide is full screen. Title is "Virtual Topical Seminars".
the equipment and the bandwidth to be able to do a streaming video just the way we have
here at Kent State University.
Multipoint meetings. Now if you're using a system, such as ah the Polycom, ViewStation,
ah a Sony, ah the Tandberg, there’s a possibility of hooking up with ah um four or more
sites at one time. Now this is an excellent tool for meetings when there are a number of
people that are in different locations. All you have to do is go in and punch in the IP
number for each of those sites and then you can bring them up and talk to each of them
all together. Now this wouldn’t be a great idea if you wanted to ah if you ah wanted to do
distance education because, if you can see, the screens are smaller up there. But if you
were using this as a way of meeting people, this would ah work out much better.
I'm, I’m trying to zoom it in a little bit.
We’ve just started a process where we're working with iVisit with webcams. Now iVisit,
one of the reasons that we like it is because it’s a cross platform application. It works
with both Macintosh and also ah Windows application. It, it ah will work with ah a little
webcam for on the Windows side it costs as little as twenty dollars. And ah on the Mac
side you have to pay a little bit more; it costs with cameras ah it costs about ah sixty-nine
dollars. The software is, the basic version of the software is free. You can download it by
just going to the website. It also will work on dial-up from home. It works with any kind
of webcam as I was talking to you, you’re, you're, you have the capability of sharing
documents and webpages and slide shows. Now if you decided you were going to use
something like the iVisit, this is an excellent tool, if you’re ah working with a group of
students, maybe with a group of pre-service students. And you needed to have a place
where you could all meet. Well ah with iVisit you can meet with ah up to eight people at
one time and it also has a chat feature,e so if some of your students are deaf you can use
the, the video proportion as a sorta like a sign post where you can see that everyone is
connected. And you can communicate using the text features, share webpages at that
time, also bring documents up and share at that time, and ah and, and be able to have a
nice meeting. You can even break your class down into groups and have your groups go
there, use their iVisit to have their meetings where they can go in, in private, talk about
their project as related to your class.
Another interesting tool that we're were just starting to use is the D-Link i2eye. It’s a
home consumer ah model that you can get and take home and hook up to your TV set.
You need ah, ah DSL line or cable modem, but it looks more like ah a miniature
videoconferencing system. Just like the one that we have on our..that I’m hooked up to
right now, not quite as ah robust, but it works similar to that. And we were thinking this
is something we may think for ah the future, but this is, would be an excellent tool for
parents to use at home. Where they could hook up at home and they could call their
teacher in the classroom and talk to their teacher about different concerns that they may
have and they could also use it to call in and talk to the teacher about ah I mean call in
and view their, their child's presentation on that particular day. So the parents and
grandparents could dial in and see ah and see a presentation even though they couldn’t be
there physically; they can use this system here to be able to punch in and see what's
happening.
15:00 PowerPoint slide is full screen. Title is "D-Link i2eye".
And be able to call the teacher ah after school and talk to her about particular things. You
can also use this system with the other ones. You know, like I said, with the Sony, the
Tandberg’s, Polycom’s, ViaVideo, it’ll work with that system also those systems also. If
it’s a small system stand alone, so you don’t have to worry about if it’s a Mac
compatible, if it’s PC compatible, you plug right into the system so you don’t have to
worry about it. It has a built in microphone, but it needs a T1, a cable modem, or a DSL
line.
Now the system that we've been using a lot is the Polycom ViaVideo, and this system ah
makes it possible for instructors to be able to call a ViewStation and keep track of what
their preservice students are doing in the classroom. Ah, in fact, we’ve had some of the,
our team leaders in the group use this program to hook up to a classroom where they had
a preservice teacher, able to observe their student in that classroom and then after they
were finished with their teaching, talk to their instructor back at the university. Now the
Polycom ViaVideo, it’s bigger then the eyeball, has a much better lens, it can connect at
higher rates, and it connects to a computer by ah, ah USB port. Which most of the
computers we're using have today. Now, I’m going to pull this back a little bit so we can
see it all.
Alright, now high-end systems. Now there’s a lot of high-end systems and they're very
useful, especially for distance education. There’s the Polycom ViewStation, that I’m
using right now, there’s the Sony, the, the p-s ah the PSE1 and PSE11, and there’s the
Tandberg, Tandberg 880 and higher system. All of these systems allow you to do things
like multipoint so if you wanted to talk to four or more sites at once you could. They
allow you to ah share your computer. You could hook up a computer to these machines
and share documents or web pages that way, you can hook up a Elmo just the way I have,
this Elmo hooked up and share documents that way, you could hook up ah, ah VCR to
these systems and maybe share a little video clip in that way. Ah these are systems, if you
were going to do ah, ah distance education course I would suggest that you, you get one
of these systems because it has a lens that can cover more area in the classroom and you
can zoom in and zoom out and pan to the left and right, ah a good choose for distance
education. And if you were using this for a student observation or classroom observation
all of these would be ah excellent choice.
The next thing that I want to talk about is joining our team. Now Jorge and I ah you can
see that we, we need as much help as we can get. There are a lot more of you out there
then there are of us. But we want to ah broaden the range and the number of people that
we have in our system here. So we're asking you to go ahead and join us in our project.
and ah you can do that by ah visiting our site. Ah I’m going to switch back over since I’m
basically all done with that and you can see me a little bit. Ah yeah, ah there, there I am.
Ok, so what we're asking you to join. We're looking for people who are interested in
videoconferencing or are in the DeafEd field who, who have some interest in
videoconferencing, who maybe interested in ah using the Polycom or webcams or iVisit
or adding captioning to ah their videoconferencing system and they want to really dive
into these fields and see what they can find out and they're looking for a group that they
can work with. We're the group that you can work with. We're Objective1.1 and our job
mainly is to see how we can ah hook all of our members together using videoconferencing equipment. Whether we're using Polycom or the iVisit we're, we don’t care. We
want ah just be able to hook up so all of our members can collaborate and talk together
and do it in a way that it will fit your particular system.
20:00 Tom is full screen and you can see him from the chest up and he is positioned
in the middle of the screen.
Ah, I know you don’t have ah um a webpage right now, we were originally, were going
to set up so that you could send us ah e-mail. We were going to put up a webpage that
was an e-mail, but we were having some trouble with our ah, ah server over here at Kent
State today. So I’m just going to ah go over a couple of questions that I had earlier and
then ah, and then rap up the session ok.
Ok, ah one question I had was ah there was someone who asked me about the D-Link
earlier. They were wondering can the D-Link aut hook up with the, with the Polycom's
ViewStations, ViaVideos and can it also hook up with ah the little iVisit. Well, ah, well
the Polycoms will hook up with D-Links and ah the D-Links will also hook up with, like
I said, all of the other systems; Sony, the Tandbergs ah but it won’t hook up with ah ah
iVisit. IVisit uses it’s own software in order to ah in order to connect. So you can hook up
with ViaVideo, ViewStation, Sony, Tandberg using D-Link i2Eye, but you can’t ah hook
up with ah the iVisit.
And ah my second question over here, alright the second one is that ah when they're
using ah the iVisit can I, I’m sorry, when they're using the ViaVideo, ah Polycom
ViaVideo, can they control the ViewStation up there? Yes, you can. It’s very easy to
control it. It has a controller on the screen for the ViaVideo and you just press the arrows,
either left or right or up and down, and it'll let you control the camera. And also, you can
zoom in so if you were, if you had the system in a classroom, you can turn off the
monitor so it won’t disturb the class and then you can zoom in and zoom out and see
exactly ah what the students are doing at any particular time.
Ok. So ah well ah I, I’m going to go ahead and rap everything up here. I ah b, basically
that’s all I have. I’m sorry we couldn’t get Jorge in. That’s ah how it's going. We had it
working perfectly last night. But then you come in this morning and we're having all
kinds of trouble. It could be on our side, it could be on his. I'll call him afterwards.
Now to wrap it up. There are many different ways you can use videoconferencing. You
can use it for meetings, ah administration can talk-use it to talk to expert to find out a
particular answers to subjects they may have, teachers can use it to talk to teachers,
teachers can use it to observe one of their preservice ah students in the classroom, you
can use it to have classroom to classroom collaboration, you can take virtual tours - go to
places your students would never be able to go. All of these are, are ways you could use
the, the, the videoconferencing system in order to ah get out there in the world. You can
also use the system for distance education. If you needed to bring ah, a teacher in, who's
across the country to your classroom, you could do that using these systems and it would
save a lot of time and money. Ah, once again we're asking for you, if you have a lot of
interest in iVisit and you wanted to investigate that, if you have interest in using H323
videoconferencing, if you're interested in maybe in firewalls and helping figuring out the
best way to configure firewalls and to get through, then we want you to call us up and
talk to us. You can go to our website which is www.deafed.net or you can ah give me a
call at…is my number…it's area code 3-3-0-6-7-2-9-8-0-1 and I'll be happy to call, talk to
you and we can talk about how we can help each other. Well, ah, um, once again I'm
sorry we couldn't get Jorge in here. We're going to have to do another one of these with
just Jorge on here talking because he's one of our excellent technology people. Um, so
I’m going to go ahead and say so long and ah we'll be seeing you next time.
25:00 Tom is full screen and you can see him from the chest up and he is positioned
in the middle of the screen.
Am I done?