LIVE AND QUICK IN THE RACE:

WEBCASTING FROM UNDER THE RACE ROCKS WAVES DIRECT TO AN EDUCATIONAL CONFERENCE IN HOLLYWOOD

February 21, 2002. number 13.

Garry Fletcher and the webcasting activity group

On Thursday, Feb 14, several members of our racerocks.com activity group escaped mid-morning to Race Rocks to participate in a live webcast to the QuickTime Live conference in Hollywood, California. You could say they were “on stage Live in Hollywood!” Well , , , almost !

Chris, Damien and Nigel braved an ebb current off the dock to perform for the webcast from underwater . They developed a new technique of hooking themselves to a guide line to ensure we could get out live some good examples of underwater life at Race Rocks, even though the conditions were less than ideal. Garry, Monica, Olend and Kiprop manipulated images and video streams on the webcasting computer top side while they did a test drive of the new webcasting software called “Live Channel.”

“The exciting thing for us” said the students “was that we were able to make smooth transitions between the underwater camera and the camera on the docks while also inserting selected pre-recorded clips and still images.”

“The purpose of this exercise,” added Garry Fletcher, “was to demonstrate to our audience at the conference in California how we can use the technology of racerocks.com in a wide variety of educational applications.”

It was only a week earlier that the decision had been made by the group to go with the amazing, yet so far unproven webcasting software “LiveChannel”. A new partner, “Channel Storm”, a software company from Israel, has been impressed with our work with the live cameras and the Race Rocks web site and has offered to partner with us by providing their software. They came through with last minute advice by long distance and many reassuring e-mails from their software engineers. Further links with our co- presenter from the Apple Learning Interchange, the generous provider of the services of the Akamai network for our video distribution on the internet made all this possible.

“I think our students are beginning to realize what an incredibly unique opportunity they have to pioneer in this area. It just has such a great potential for many educational applications.” continued Garry. “We even use the International Affairs presentations each week with the two cameras to practise some aspects of webcasting and on- the fly editing. Those students who really wish to take advantage of it are able to gain experience with some real cutting edge technology.” The racerocks.com activity is adding a webpage this week to provide images of the venture.

A recent addition to the campus side of racerocks.com is a wireless aerial atop the academic building, just like that used at Race Rocks. This gives an added opportunity to cover wirelessly events from around the college campus, outdoors or in. As spring approaches, watch for notices on the webcast schedule page on the Pearson homepage for short-notice of events.