What tools will work best?

[D Cramton]

Hi all.

This is my first post here, and hopefully it is not too noobish. I apologize for the lengthy prose. I'm a frustrated novelist, apparently!

I have a request from faculty to do a class-to-class conference, with a professor on each end. One week one professor will be the main instructor, the next week the other. They want each class to see the other when necessary, plus chalkboards and any other visual displays in the room. They want to push presenter screens to students. And all students should be audible to everyone.

One end will be in a classroom with 20 Macs (computer lab), & projection. The other end is in a classroom with ONE Mac (media classroom), audio reinforcement and projection. Even though the classrooms are separated by 50 miles, they are both inside our firewall. We own one Polycom VSX 8000 (configured in a mobile cart with 27" monitor and Sony Pan-n-Tilt cam), one VTel running Windows 95 (!!!) (configured as above) and a dedicated ISDN backbone: Washington State's K20 network. We also have lots of portable audio and video equipment: mics, mixers, monitors, cameras, etc. There is some limited amount of money available for equipment, but probably not enough to buy another VSX 8000. And I don't know if that would be the right solution, anyway.

And so my plea: does anyone have any thoughts on how to pull something like this off? I have some ideas, but they all seem needlessly complex and ugly to me. I'm a video producer by trade, so I want to cable the whole thing together with hardware, but something tells me there are more elegant solutions.

Any help would be most greatly appreciated.

Dave Cramton
The Evergreen State College

ps- If I was unclear, this will be a weekly occurrence.

[Wise82Guy]

Hey Dave. You might want to have a sit-down with a local integrator / reseller to see if what you're looking to do is within your budget. It's certainly possible, but trying to build a classroom around a Windows 95 box could present some challenges :-)

[AceVid]

The first thing you should do is "accidentally" drop the Vtel..so it breaks..then cry poor to your administration and get a new codec.

[outlooker]

The MACs limit the solution, but a Click To Meet with 20-30 seats' license is one choice.

[D Cramton]

Thanks for the input thus far. Yeah, we'd like to drop the VTel, figuratively and literally, but it's our backup (back way, waaay, up!) and we use it occasionally. We do room-to-room between the two campuses on a pretty regular basis, and even run a TV-style 3-camera switched show with 2-way Q&A once a quarter. Incorporating the students' screens and pushing content to the individual desktops is where I'm having conceptual issues.

Any one have opinions about Adobe Connect? I'm trying to dig my way through the free trial.

--DWC

[cfaasen]

Since you are within an IP network I would look at a WEB Conferencing alternative. Presently some of the schools that I have participated in providing consulting for long distance ed have used this approach. Depending on the options required, extremely effective and cost prohibitive.This would allow a number of particpants to connect by video, audio and desktop. The only issue is bandwidth, it is server based and requires desktop integration.