Videoconferencing Out on a Lim

Unbelievably, I’ve been thinking about how we could get videoconferencing into every classroom. We’re still in the days of trying to get it into every school in our county (about 3/4 there). But in my districts where every school has it, now they want it in every classroom.

Why VC in Every Classroom?
First, here are the catalysts from the last few weeks that have set my brain spinning:

• One of our local superintendents wanted to know if it was possible to buy cheaper cameras and have videoconferencing in all the classrooms, preferably connected to the projectors installed with the Promethean boards in all the classrooms. It’s not easily done nor seems to make sense cabling-wise with the current options out there.
• I know of at least two of my local districts who are setting up “model classrooms,” and are including videoconferencing as part of the technologies featured.
• My teachers are starting to say they want it in their classroom. Not just a mobile cart rolled into the classroom, but they want it there all the time. Here’s a sample comment from the current session of my online class, Planning Interactive Curriculum Connections. Of course this description assumes the need for fiber so any teacher could VC any time they want as well.

My hopes and ideas for using videoconferencing is to enhance my curriculum. I would love to have the equipment in my classroom, so I don’t have to mess with scheduling and compromising with others in my building. Since our students are growing up in a global community I would like for them to see more of the rest of the world and meet people from other cultures.

• At the USDLA Conference last week, I heard several K12 educators describe dreams for VC: many more content providers (about 250-300 ish now if you count the local ones not ready to offer content nationally), and VC in every school.
• I downloaded the latest version of XMeeting on my Mac and got up & running in two minutes with no NAT messiness due to a new cool little thing called a stun server. I’ll write more about that later.

Is It Possible to Have VC in Every Classroom?
I believe that VC cannot become mainstream until the cost is below $1000, even below $700 or $800. A school needs to be able to buy VC equipment without a grant. I don’t know very many places that have acquired their equipment without grant funding, and big grant funding at that. They should be able to get it with the district tech budget, or with little local grants like the MACUL grant (up to $2000 per grant).

A Paradigm Shift is Required
I also think that VC cannot become mainstream in schools until the vendors are selling it not just for teaching or for meetings or for traditional uses of VC. Schools need to see the value of curriculum videoconferencing - experts, authors, content providers, collaborations, projects, backyard content, the whole works! We need great VC experiences published in the popular edtech magazines. Schools need to know they can do a ton of videoconferences for minimal cost - i.e. lots of free ones in addition to the paid quality content from our favorite providers.

A Dream Curriculum Videoconferencing VC Kit
I’m hearing the term “VC kit” from my friends in Wales, England, and Scotland more often these days. I really like it. I think we need a “kit,” not a box that has to be rack mounted in a specially designed cart. If I were an engineer, here’s how I’d try to design it.

• Runs on the computer already in the classroom (a high end one of course). Can be Mac or PC. Could it be built on XMeeting for the Mac? That would solve the Mac challenge easily.
• Has classroom quality audio. I prefer the Polycom mic, not just because Polycom funds many of my ideas, but because it is so well suited to placement anywhere in the classroom: desk, stool, floor, chair, etc. We need something that is just above desktop videoconferencing. We need the echo cancellation for the classroom audio.
• Can show slides etc. from the computer it’s installed on. Curriculum videoconferencing is primarily receiving content, but also collaborations and projects. Students need to be able to present clues and information about their town, among other things. This would eliminate the need for any inputs, hooking up VCR, document camera, etc. etc. Presentations could be shared from the computer. Also, preferably, not just H.239! Yikes, that’s driving me crazy. Hopefully the engineers could think of a way to make that work no matter what you connected to on the other end.
• A simple camera with presets. A camera a little higher end than a webcam. We need presets for ASK programs, for collaborations, for presentations in projects. But not so high end that the cost is too much.
• Hooks up to the projector already in the classroom. A kit that integrated well with the major interactive boards would be awesome. Certainly there must a way to do this. I think installing with the computer that’s hooked up to the board seems best to me.
• Can do Skype and iChat too. Ok, now I’m really dreaming. But think about it. We really need a way to do VC - either Skype or iChat with our international buddies, or H.323 with content providers, colleagues, universities, other H323 sites etc. If it could work with Skype, why not iChat? If it was basically just a camera and a great mic with software for H.323, couldn’t the camera and mic be used for those too? Why not?! Since I’m dreaming! Schools need an all-in-one solution for all the curriculum videoconferencing opportunities out there.
• EASY firewall solutions. I am so intrigued by the stun server that comes with XMeeting. Couldn’t it be this easy to make H323 work on school network? It has to be if we’re going to increase the use of curriculum videoconferencing.

What do YOU think? Is it a worthy goal? Do we need it? How would you design a less than $1000 unit for all classrooms? Please comment.

Since the collaborate session ended early, I popped over and caught the tail end of the NASA session by Greg Pitzer and Scott Anderson from the NASA Digital Learning Network.

From what I could gather, the session focused on the technology necessary to videoconference from remote sites. It was really cool to see the “behind the scenes” of what it takes to make programs like NEEMO and Desert RATS actually happen. I’m sure some of you reading this blog had classes participate in those events.

Some of the satellite VC systems they’ve used are: Immarsat and KU Band satellite and vsat.

They also showed the Tandberg Tactical system which was made for the military but is great for remote vc because it’s designed to be outdoors in sand and weather and anything else that could affect the equipment. Quite expensive though.

Another interesting piece of technology they showed was the NewTek TriCaster – which they said would be good for schools looking to start a local broadcasting / morning news show type program.

USDLA The Intersection of Real-time Learning Tools with Learning Management Systems by Alan Greenberg from Wainhouse Research. Snippets of ideas and wisdom.

What’s a mashup? Media types, code, data sources, etc. from different sources.

Which of these do you use? vc, web conferencing, whiteboards, wikis/collaborative tools, LMS/CMS, other…

“videoconferencing was the hot technology in the 90s”

A crashup can be the blue screen of death or cars crashing together.

Alan has a great chart with the learning activity down the left and the tool (LMS, VC, streaming, web conferencing, interaction enables). Then whether or not that learning activity is possible in that tool.

Technology creates latency - it’s between you and the learners. You want that to diminish.

The crashup/mashup is happening because you need all those learning activities whenever you need them, not just in this tool or that tool.

A unified collaboration environment has a nice mix of synchronous and asynchronous tools. IM / Web conferencing / interactive writing tools / recording / streaming / classroom vc / web vc / virtual worlds / collaboration portals / audio threads / LMS CMS etc. All these things come together in one environment with infrastructure services.

Interestingly, he asked the audience if they have tried GoogleDocs. 15 people raised their hands. Then he asked, who is using it still? Only 3 raised their hands. I wonder how many people actually seriously collaborate for their work on documents with other people. And of those, how many stayed with GoogleDocs?

How can you take your content and make it for mobile devices? All these tools will converge onto mobile devices. The iPhone broke down the display tech and usability barriers for using mobile devices.

Comments from the audience about Second Life “I don’t have time for my first life”

mlearning - mobile learning. Convergence of educational, consumer, prosumer, enterprise markets based on the Smartphone.

The barrier of broadband and devices is melting away. I wonder about rural areas that don’t have the services offered with the cell phone plans that the more urban areas have. Is that barrier also melting away?

A report referred to: The Distance Education and eLearning Landscape

The silos of videoconference vs. online tools are breaking down. The VC has to connect to the LMS. Greenberg’s prediction: LMS platforms will include IM, presence and VC as a matter of course by 2012. This is interesting because it’s the best of both worlds - VC for the human interactivity and online for the reflection.

Context sensitivity is going to be more important - moods, polls, ways to know the context of the learner.

Check out WRPlatinum as well.

From an audience member - in Afghanistan, everyone has a phone but they can’t afford food. They aren’t learning on a computer, they can learn on a mobile phone.

The session ended with Q&A and sharing from the audience.

Did you see this in the Wainhouse Research Bulletin a few weeks ago? Be sure to click the link to see the picture!

MIT Launches One Videoconferencing System per Child (OVPC) Nicholas Nery of The Manchurian Institute of Technology thinks everyone in the world should have a videoconferencing system.
The world famous professor, author, researcher, and diplomat has launched the non-profit OVPC organization to design, manufacture, and distribute the world’s most affordable videoconferencing system, priced at less than $100 and aimed at youngsters in the developing world. With moisture-resistant seals and a crash-proof hard drive, combined with built-in WiFi, colorful cables and connectors, solar panels for mobility and power generation in remote areas, and a high definition camera, this hardly-no-frills system supports 720p video and Siren-14 stereo audio. Prototypes of the SIP-based, H.264-compliant device are due to ship in Q4-08.
The company is concentrating on serving populations in underdeveloped and/or war-torn regions of Western Africa, South East Asia, and Texas.

Texas at the end of the paragraph surprised me. If any of you are involved, please comment and tell us more about it!

There’s also an interesting commentary on this development on the OLPC News site. I hope that those involved can imagine more instructional educationally engaging experiences besides just this:

Imagine entire country’s classrooms, full of children, in a massive multiplayer online conference.

Good that someone’s thinking about the bandwidth implications too:

I just hope that SES Global can handle all that data traffic on its donated bandwidth or there will be a lot of disappointed children (and adults).

So far, we’re still working on access to videoconferencing in each school. One of my superintendents wanted to know how to get VC in all the classrooms, even though it’s highly unlikely (at their present use rate) that they’ll ever do more than one VC at a time. Do you see a time in the future when every classroom at least has VC? Do you think the vendors will ever make desktop VC low cost that has audio designed for a classroom and maybe camera presets too? is that too much to ask for a low cost desktop system? What do you think?

It seems like this is the third year in a row that sometime in March we have really weird H.261/263/264 dialing conflicts. We upgrade software, and all of a sudden bridges are crashing, sites just ring & ring and won’t negotiate, and one site can take down the whole conference. Is it just me or is this happening to you too?

When you do a lot of connections with multiple vendors’ units involved in the call, once in a while you get caught in between upgrades. The upgrade of one vendor breaks the connections with another vendor and they haven’t fixed it in their latest version yet. Has this happened to you?

It seems like it’s never a good idea to upgrade anything in the middle of the school year. However, sometimes we want to upgrade to fix a problem. It seems like a no-win situation.

That’s my rant for today! Do you have any words of wisdom? Please comment!

Reading my VCInsight news and found this announcement from the March 17 issue:

At VoiceCon Orlando 2008 this week, Microsoft Corp. announced broad availability of its conferencing solutions and continued customer and partner adoption of its Unified Communications platform. Polycom and TANDBERG videoconferencing systems (74% of the installed base of room systems) will work with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007. In a keynote address, Microsoft revealed that it has plans for the OCS Server to handle High Definition video and that the company is developing a HD videoconferencing camera with TANDBERG, priced for the masses at $300.

This sounds really intriguing. It sounds like a desktop type unit, but I wonder if it would have audio that could work in a classroom?  It sounds like it might require the OCS server, which might be a complication for schools. Still, it’s nice to know the vendors are competing over a low cost videoconference system, which should continue to benefit K12 education.

I’ve “muttered” here before about H.239 and the various problems with it (H.239 and MCUs and this post). Today I had a compelling reason to make it work and room in my brain to figure it out! Honestly, that’s half my problem with this technology. Just no time to figure it out!

Today I figured it out. I found the setting on our Polycom VSX 7000s to make sure H.239 is turned on. It’s under System, Admin, Network, Call Preference, and you want it checked.

I also found the setting on my conference template on the TANDBERG MPS MCU. It’s called “dual stream” and has to be turned on.

Once I figured that out, I was able to receive H.239 from a Polycom VSX 7000 with People Plus Content through my TANDBERG MCU to a Polycom VSX 7000 on my desk. Yeah!!

I think testing H.239 scenarios is on my list to figure out too. It would be really nice to know more certainly which units can receive it and which can’t; and how to fix (update settings) ones that can’t that really should be able to! Now for just a little more time…..

Yesterday I spent some time talking to a sales engineer about how the new Polycom RMX bridge works. What I was most interested in is how the dialing works. The Codian and TANDBERG bridges use some variation of dialing and conference numbers depending on how they are configured. The new RMX is set up that way too. Polycom calls it an “ad hoc” conference bridge, although it can be work in a “scheduled environment” when installed with the ReadiManager SE 200.  This means the only bridge left that allows “direct inward internet dialing” (i.e. call an IP address and get dropped into the right conference) is the Polycom MGC. Please correct me if I’m wrong by commenting below. And if you’re reading this post, please check the comments for the full picture with potentially differing opinions!

Industry Trends
What I found intriguing to this conversation is the general trend of the videoconferencing industry.  A shift is happening from a centralized manager doing all the scheduling (a scheduled environment) to end users able to dial into the MCU/bridge and voila! their conference starts (ad hoc).

I think the other reason for this trend is a concern on the part of some vendors and security people regarding IP address dialing. My sense from reading the Megaconference listserv is that the education market isn’t too worried about this. But someone is, because I’m starting to hear from vendors that dialing IP addresses is a terrible thing. As that message gets to schools that don’t know any better, they’ll install solutions that create islands and difficult dialing.

Dialing History
We used to have ISDN numbers to dial, and they usually worked unless a 700 area code was involved. Then we had IP addresses, and many of us are pretty attached to that method of dialing. The new way is IP plus conference number or extension in some form. And some of us are having trouble adjusting to that. I’ve been fighting it and muttering about it for three years!  (see GDS Dialing, Dialing Insanity, Problems in K12 Dialing, etc. etc.)

Weird Dialing is Here; Now What?
Now that I realize the major players in the industry are all starting to use this IP plus conference/extension number dialing, I know I have to adjust my brain to it. Time to stop muttering. Time to instead think of solutions. So I’m starting to brainstorm some possible ways that we can help each other connect to each other. I’ve learned a few things already that I’ll share here now:

• Gatekeepers strip off the ##extension if you try to dial IP ## extension. I thought it was just my Tandberg gatekeeper up till yesterday when I learned the Polycom V2IU does it too. Instead, the recommended method is to add extension@IP address to your address book and dial that way. This extension@IP address is called an NXO dial string.
• Let’s say you’re trying to get a Tandberg endpoint to dial an IP ## extension to connect to a unit behind a Polycom V2IU. Make sure the V2IU is on the latest version. On the latest version you can use a feature called digit manipulation. The Tandberg can dial a * instead of a # and it will still connect.

I have a few other ideas simmering, so stay tuned. If you have any other ideas on how we can collaborate to make dialing each other less frustrating, please comment below. If you have any corrections to my notes here, please comment too!

I’ve blogged about this Understanding and Troubleshooting H323 Networks workshop from the University of Wisconsin before here and here. It’s excellent. Now they are offering it again and this time via web/phone conference. If you can possibly scrape the dollars together, I highly recommend it for your networking and technical videoconferencing support staff. Even videoconferencing coordinators like me - educators turned MCU support - can gain something from the workshop, especially if you’ve done a lot of connections to sites outside your network and run into strange scenarios.

They don’t pay me, or even ask me, to advertise this workshop. I’m just sharing it with you because it was such a benefit to me.

It’s been quiet here because I’m living RAP matching night and day at the moment. But…. check this out!

Wainhouse Research has just reviewed Polycom’s new Lost Packet Recovery capability that’s included in the new HDX units. It’s propietary right now, but Polycom is pushing the industry to accept this as a standard. It sure would be helpful in some of my districts!! I hope it comes out soon on the VSX 7000s!