Net gives boost to videoconference
Huge benefits seen for schools as connections speed up
Published Monday, October 11, 1999, in the San Jose Mercury News
BY JON HEALEY
Mercury News Staff Writer
mercurycenter.com
It's not unusual for school children to use the Internet to look up biographies of authors, watch video clips of rocket launches or find diagrams showing how a telephone works.
In New Jersey, though, the local phone company and a Silicon Valley high-tech firm are using the Internet to help kids see and talk to one another, as well as anyone else with a camera and Internet link. Their ''video portal'' on the Web lets teachers launch or replay video conferences with a couple of clicks of the mouse.
The $6 million effort by Bell Atlantic and FVC.com of Santa Clara is the latest example of how the Internet is simplifying the once daunting task of meeting and collaborating across great distances. In recent months, a number of companies have emerged with simple and relatively inexpensive ways to set up meetings or broadcast video presentations over the Internet, using the Web as a sort of switchboard.
Most of these efforts can't deliver high-quality, full-screen video signals to and from multiple users simultaneously, however. That requires the kind of high-capacity network Bell Atlantic and FVC.com are using, not the typical Internet pipeline.
Pacific Bell has been trying to prod California schools to use video conferencing for about five years, offering large discounts on network services and free advice. But Linda Uhrenholt, a former teacher in Livermore who now is an education advocate for Pac Bell, says the state remains ''a little behind the times'' in video conferencing.
''It's one thing to give the free lines, it's another for teachers actually to use them,'' Uhrenholt said.
The key to Bell Atlantic and FVC.com's approach is giving teachers easy access to a much broader array of material. That includes a storehouse of pre-recorded demonstrations, tours and lectures in addition to live conferences with universities, museums, zoos, hospitals and other classrooms.
''Don't think of it as schools talking to one another,'' said Peter Ventimiglia, vice president of external affairs at Bell Atlantic. ''Think of it as schools talking to other information resources wherever there is information.''
FVC.com supplies the technology needed for the video portal, which acts as a virtual switchboard through which users set up their conferences or trigger the delivery of recorded programs. Bell Atlantic provides the high-speed ''broadband'' network needed to deliver pictures free of the jerky motion and blurring that mars most video sent over the Internet.
2 1/2 years to go
Ventimiglia said Bell Atlantic still has about 2 1/2 years of work before the $55 million network is complete. Ultimately, it will give every classroom in the state high-speed Internet access. By the end of the year the network will be available to more than 600,000 students statewide, officials said.
The system works with just about any video conferencing equipment, whether it be the $50,000 kind found in corporate boardrooms or the $800 kind hooked onto a personal computer. The one catch is that the equipment must also be connected to the Web, which means a computer has to be tied in at each classroom.
To start a conference, teachers point the computer's Web browser to a special site with a directory listing potential participants and then click on as many as they'd like to bring into the session. Video feeds from each participant pop up on the monitor, each appearing in its own window. Teachers also can bring in video from classrooms or sources not listed in the directory simply by typing the phone number of that person's video-conferencing line.
For example, if third-graders in Newark were getting a demonstration in class of how the lungs work, teachers in Atlantic City could go to the video portal, click on the Newark classroom's listing and bring a video feed from the demonstration to their students. A monitor in the Newark classroom, in turn, would pipe in audio and video from Atlantic City, enabling students at each end to take part in the lesson.
Teachers also can replay a recorded demonstration by clicking on the appropriate listing in the portal's directory. The directory can be searched by topic, so teachers don't have to know the details of where and when the original session took place.
Analyst Joe Skorupa of RHK Inc., a South San Francisco-based telecommunications market research and consulting firm, said it's possible to do what FVC.com and Bell Atlantic are doing in New Jersey without the Internet. The New Jersey approach, however, ''makes it easier, it makes it more flexible, (and) potentially makes it more secure,'' he said.
The other advantage to FVC.com's approach is that it uses high-speed Internet connections, which carry a flat monthly fee, instead of ISDN lines, which are billed by the minute.
With an ISDN connection, a school might spend $3,000 a month for two hours per day of video conferencing, said Richard Beyer, FVC.com's chief executive. In New Jersey, schools pay $400 per month for a high-speed connection with unlimited video conferencing.
The cost of video conferencing equipment is another potential barrier, but prices have plummeted in recent years. San Jose-based Polycom, for example, sells equipment for under $4,000 that connects to a television set, and Intel has a PC-based camera and software that sells for about $800.
In a year, Beyer said, the price of PC-based equipment should fall to less than $100, as more of the technology and equipment gets bundled into the computer.
Already, a number of companies like WebEx and Vstream are offering ways to do presentations and interactive audio conferences through the Internet, while consumers with cameras on their PCs can set up video conferences through the Web with the help of companies like Visitalk.com. Based in Phoenix, Visitalk provides a free, easy-to-use directory for finding people with similar interests, as well as a launching pad for one-on-one or small-group video sessions via the Internet.
To approach the picture quality of broadcast television, however, users need high-speed connections to broadband networks.
Those kinds of services are coming, as evidenced by Bell Atlantic's work in New Jersey. Another likely provider is Qwest Communications International Inc., which demonstrated high-quality video conferencing with FVC.com at a recent networking industry trade show.
Pac Bell program
Pac Bell began its efforts to bring video conferencing to California schools in 1994, when it started a three-year program to wire schools and libraries with ISDN for distance learning. About 3,000 schools accepted Pac Bell's offer, spokesman John Britton said, adding that many of those schools are now upgrading to high-speed connections.
Still, Uhrenholt said, a problem has been convincing teachers that video conferencing has a role to play in their classrooms. On one recent trip she found conferencing equipment boxed up in a storage closet because, she said, ''they didn't know what to do with it.''
Part of Pac Bell's answer has been to provide teacher training and line up places for students to visit via video. Across the country, research institutions, colleges, museums and zoos have started offering video tours and interactive learning sessions, in part because it gives them a new way to promote themselves and raise revenue.
One example is the Gorilla Foundation in Woodside, where students can hold a conference with Koko, a gorilla with a sign-language vocabulary. Of course, they may not like what the ape has to say.
Uhrenholt says Koko told her during one video conference to comb her hair. ''I took out my comb and thought, 'No, I'm not going to comb my hair for a gorilla.' ''
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contact Jon Healey at jhealey@sjmercury.com or (877) 727-5005.
|
