Advanced Teaching Technologies: Brave New World

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River City Project

Advanced Teaching Technologies: Brave New World

12/28/2006

By Joseph C. Panettieri

The Telepresence Tools Are Coming

Below, a sampler of next-generation videoconferencing solutions.

Solution: Cisco TelePresence
Company: Cisco Systems
Background: May evolve into a solution for university boardrooms that unites remote campuses.
Price: Up to $299,000 for hardware, plus $40,000 in deployment costs and $3,000 to $3,500 per month for maintenance.

Solution: RealPresence Experience (RPX)
Company: Polycom
Background: Seats up to 36 people, making it a potential solution for distance learning applications or online learning sessions between campuses.
Price: $249,000

Solution: Halo Collaboration Studio
Company: Hewlett-Packard
Background: Initially designed for corporate boardrooms; lower-cost alternatives may target university administration offices.
Price: Up to $425,000, plus $18,000 per month per conference room for operating costs.

Remaining Risks

Despite growing interest in MUVEs and 3D learning environments, the technologies have their limitations.

CISCO TELEPRESENCE resembles a virtual boardroom;
life-size images of each participant allow attendees to read body
language, maintain eye contact, and truly interact with peers.

“The real limitation of a MUVE is that you have to have access to it,” says Dieterle, “and a lot of components have to be in place—hardware, a high-speed network connection, the operating environment— for everything to work just right. You can write a great piece of software, but if it d'esn’t work on school computers and teachers aren’t on board, it’s difficult to achieve success.”

Another limitation is psychological in nature. “Most schools ban anything with a ‘gaming’ interface or live chat,” says Cooper. “There is deep-seated antagonism toward games and anything gamelike in education. For some reason, educators feel that anything fun can’t be educational, which couldn’t be further from the truth.” And as with any internet site, there are possibilities for abuse, from students acting out, to sexual predators logging in. Almost all MUVEs have significant safeguards to mitigate both risks.

Moreover, MUVEs differ in design from one another. Certain sites, such as Tapped In, are open source and may be freely downloaded and installed. “However, ‘free’ is a relative term,” says Cooper. “You need programming support to run any system. I strongly urge educators to register for existing MUVEs and try them out, rather than trying to create their own environment. Reinventing the wheel is a very difficult thing.”

Picture Perfect?

While 3D computer animation increasingly dominates MUVEs, digital video is also taking on a greater role in higher education. For instance, dramatic improvements in videoconferencing technology could set the stage for more advanced distance learning applications.

Indeed, technology vendors such as Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, and Polycom are evangelizing the new “telepresence” approach to videoconferencing. CT witnessed the power of telepresence firsthand during a visit to Cisco Systems’ New York offices in October.

In a typical setting, Cisco’s approach to telepresence resembles a virtual boardroom. During the October demonstration, six executives were seated in a New York office and another six executives were seated in a London office. Three 65-inch plasma screens, digital sound systems, and carefully placed cameras transformed the two physical rooms into one virtual boardroom.

Cisco TelePresence delivers life-size images of each participant, ensuring that it’s easy to read attendees’ body language, maintain eye contact, and truly interact with peers across the table— regardless of their physical location. Gone are the days of pan/tilt/zoom cameras, muffled speaker phones, and tubebased TVs that don’t capture the finer nuances of nonverbal communication.

Instead of slapping together thirdparty technology, Cisco spent two years designing and refining its TelePresence system. Everything in a TelePresence room—from the plasma screens to the microphones—carries Cisco’s logo. Even the accompanying furniture was designed by the TelePresence team. It’s as if Cisco studied Apple and that company’s commitment to the total user experience.