Ozarks Technical Community College (MO) and MOREnet, the Missouri Research and Educational Network, are digging deeper into the application of video conferencing to learning and research.

They’ve installed 1,600 feet of armored direct burial fiber optic cable into Riverbluff Cave in southwest Missouri.

A field house where paleontologists do some of their work has been networked. The cave was discovered in 2001, and has since attracted great interest from scientists. It holds of some of the oldest Ice Age fossils in North America and numerous items from the Pleistocene have been found relatively undisturbed on cave surfaces and in top mud layers.

Video conferencing technology will open up the cave to students and researchers while protecting the site from the much of the negative impact of human visitors.

Polycom video conferencing equipment will help bring the field science into classrooms at various institutions around the state while preserving the integrity of the cave as much as possible.