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Southeast Community College: Building the Video Campus, One Brick at a Time
11/26/2002
Using the video appliance, the program is able to show hands-on demonstrations directly from the lab-classrooms. "We couldn't roll a bed into a television studio," explains Simpson. "It wasn't practical." Now, Simpson delivers a VBrick appliance to whatever classroom or lab is giving the demo, plugs it into the LAN, and sends the signal back to the studio, where it's then distributed across the closed-circuit TV network. In this way, nursing students on different campuses can receive the benefits of the training demonstration. "If it weren't for the VBrick set-up, we never would have attempted this integrated nursing program across the five campuses," he notes.In the future, says Simpson, the college wants to use the technology to create both synchronous and asynchronous training materials by recording a class, "live-casting" or synchronously distributing it through the network, and simultaneously recording and archiving it. Students can watch the class either on the campus intranet or on closed-circuit TV.
In fact, content can be redistributed any time in a variety of ways. "We've almost eliminated the cost of producing content, and it's available in [a] live synchronous version and [an] asynchronous version for later use," says Simpson. "It also becomes a very valuable aid for the instructor who can use it for a lecture. It may not be the whole class, but it becomes a critical component to enhance that class."
One of the strengths of the system is that it is easy to implement and maintain. In the past, creating a closed-circuit TV system or re-purposing classroom content would have required expensive and complex technology that would have been out of reach for smaller colleges.
Other uses of the technology is to support security and surveillance cameras, as well as revenue-generating services such as delivering conventional cable TV to college dorms.
"Each VBrick device has a useful life of its own, but when you stitch them together, you get a complete, multi-purpose, end-to-end system," explains Rich Mavrogeanes, a VBrick vice president. "Instead of relying on different, often incompatible, technologies for streaming video on the Web, videoconferencing, authoring content, security, and monitoring—with VBrick, it's one technology that forms a system and d'es all of it, lowering complexity and cost."
For more information, contact Charlie Simpson, Southeast Community College director of technology at (606) 589-2145.
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