This lecture on the use of technology for the support of teaching and learning is part of an ongoing lecture series hosted by the Knowledge Media Design Institute (KMDI) at the University of Toronto. The 2009 KMDI Lecture Series aims to celebrate and encourage interdisciplinary collaboration in digital media innovation.

Webcasts of all talks in the lecture series are archived and available for viewing by visiting the KMDIat13 website. Podcasts of the talks are also available by searching the iTunes music store for keyword “KMDI” or by subscribing to the RSS Feed.

The KMDI Lecture Series continues Thursday, March 26, 4:10pm EDT (UTC-4), with lectures from Professors Nadia Caidi, Megan Boler, and Nicholas Burbules on the theme “Digital Media and the Politics of Truths and Forgetting“.  To attend the live webcast, access the KMDI Presentation Portal on the day of the event, or attend in-person at UofT.

New Ways of Teaching and Learning with Technology Enhanced Classrooms

Professor Jim Slotta, Curriculum Teaching and Learning, OISE/UT
Watch Archived Webcast | Full Abstract and Bio

Professor Jim Slotta presents a new line of research, funded by CRC and SSHRC, that explores a rich form of learning where students collaborate with peers within and between classrooms to establish a knowledge base that will be used in subsequent scripted inquiry activities. Extensions of this work to the topic of “smart classrooms” are also discussed.

Digital Communication Technologies: Educational and Social Practices

Professor Clare Brett, Curriculum Teaching and Learning, OISE/UT
Watch Archived Webcast | Full Abstract and Bio

Professor Clare Brett’s talk focuses on key issues in how new technologies are impacting upon how we teach, learn and collaborate, and uses an educational research project called GRAIL (Graduate Researcher Academic Identity on-Line) under development to illustrate some fundamental issues in adopting new technologies. 

Technologies for Higher Education

Professor Jim Hewitt, Curriculum Teaching and Learning, OISE/UT
Watch Archived Webcast | Full Abstract and Bio

New information and communication technologies offer exciting new possibilities for higher education. Professor Jim Hewitt reviews research conducted on some of these technologies, and discuss problems, barriers and obstacles, both cultural and organizational, that limit the instructional potential of these new tools.

This release, ePresence Capture 4.2.19, offers two new features that our users have repeatedly asked for: high quality H.264 Flash encoding for on-demand presentations and the ability to automatically upload media archives on 3rd party media servers or CDNs via FTP protocol.

We are very excited to announce that both features are now available. A couple weeks back we demonstrated how amazing H.264-encoded presentations look on the web by embedding Steve Trickey’s talk which was published using the Release Candidate of ePresence Capture 4.2.19.

ePresence Capture 4.2.19 is now available for our customers at http://epresence.tv/

One of the things that many of our users have asked for over the years is a truly mobile/lightweight solution for capturing ePresence events. This is important for users that need to travel to capture events, or wish to bring in remote speakers.

Over the past few months, we’ve been working on a new application designed to meet the needs of these users. The name of this application is simply Capture, and it makes it possible to capture ePresence content from anywhere. Capture can be launched as a web application, requiring only a modern browser and the Flash plugin, or as a standalone desktop application, using the new Adobe AIR runtime.

Capture on the web

Launching Capture on the web allows anyone to broadcast a presentation without installing anything on their machine. It includes the following features:

• Works in any modern browser: Supports modern versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Safari, on all operating systems.
• No-hassle audio/video: Automatically detects a wide range of video cameras and microphones.
• PowerPoint support: Upload any Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.
• One-click webcasting: Requires only a single button click for the presenter to start webcasting.
• One-click publishing: Once the presentation is recorded, the site administrator can publish it with just one click.

Capture on any computer

In addition to the features listed above, Capture on the desktop also supports:

• Multi-platform: Installs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
• Desktop sharing: Share your screen, via images or flash video.
• VGA2USB sharing: Share the screen of a presenter’s computer, using an Epiphan VGA2USB device. For the presenter, it’s as easy as connecting to a projector.
• Offline recording: Capture presentations without an internet connection, and publish them later.
• Fault-tolerance: A recording is always saved locally, in case the internet connection goes down or is unstable.

Summary

This exciting new application is currently in alpha testing, and we expect it to enter beta testing within the next couple weeks. Here’s a little teaser of what’s coming:

The ePresence Lab is happy to announce guest speaker Steve Trickey from Flinders University, Australia, will be presenting his work on the Flinders University CPD project this Wednesday, February 4. As part of the Flinders University CPD project, Steve Trickey is developing the IT component to enable a mix of video conferencing, web streaming and on-demand rich media presentations that can be delivered to a diverse range of health professionals scattered across the country.

We have recently opened this webcast to all those interested – we hope you’ll be able to join us!

An allied health workforce continuing education and training program:
Building rural workforce capacity

Steve Trickey, Remote ICT Services, Flinders University

Date: Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Time: 10:30am – 12:00pm EST (GMT-5)

Abstract and Bio:
https://www.events.utoronto.ca/index.php?action=singleView&eventid=3251

Event will be webcast live and archived at:
http://demo.epresence.tv/

NOTE: This live webcast will require a login; please sign-up on the day of the event by clicking “Join”.

ePresence Capture 4.2.18 is a highly recommended update that fixes several bugs and increases overall reliability of the system. Please update your capture stations.

With 4.2.18 the capture process now runs locally in both Connected and Disconnected modes, ensuring that the archive will not be lost in the event of a connection drop. This update also successfully fixes a problem related to slide synchronization in disconnected mode. A few reliability fixes were added to better support Wowza and Adobe FMS. 4.2.18 continues to support remote control for fully automated webcasting using the web based scheduler. The VGA processor was also updated so the system handles plugging and unplugging the VGA on the fly. This hot swap feature can easily handle multiple presenters’ laptops with differing screen resolutions.

If you need assistance with this update please email support@epresence.tv

Update your address books!

One of the most common questions used to be “how many people can actually participate in a live webcast?”. Well, this was a tough one. Although ePresence software is highly scalable by design, there was no actual infrastructure in place to offer an environment that can allocate hundreds or thousands of concurrent connections. All we could offer is to shop around for high capacity co-location providers, which often resulted in significant TCO. The new release of ePresence Capture addresses this by supporting all 3 major Flash servers (Adobe Flash Media 3, Wowza and Red5) as well as Windows Media Services and Helix. We have successfully tested our systems for major webcasting events against 3 of the world’s leading content delivery networks (CDNs): Akamai (http://www.akamai.com/). Limelight (http://www.limelightnetworks.com/) and EdgeCast (http://www.edgecast.com/). These networks employ so-called Cloud Computing technology for streaming content delivery.  We have also added support for the most advanced H.264 live video encoding, which is supported by all 3 CDNs. This made an unlimited rich media webcasting with stunning high definition video quality a reality.

This release is all about user interface. We have revisited the entire workflow on both ePresence Server and ePresence Capture Station.

ePresence Server 4.2

The back end has been completely re-designed. It now relies on various framework technologies, including MonoRail and Hibernate. These frameworks allowed us not only make the web interface ”2008-looking” but also highly customizable. The new features include a calendar view for the webcast schedule, waiting rooms that allow users to login into events in advance, a media portal view for the archive repository with automatically generated thumbnails, and multiple other enhancements.

ePresence Capture 4.2

The main focus on the capture station side was simplification. We decided to develop a brand new application for the capture station that fully supports our new hardware with embedded touch screen. Although the code is heavily based on ePresence Producer, the user interface has been completely re-designed. We decided to develop a very simple rich media capture application with no more than 3 clicks involved in a process, whether it is a recording session or publishing procedure. Big touch screen controls are now easy to operate so there is no need for a mouse or stylus. There are several functionality enhancements, but the most important one is related to our VGA processing module. We have significantly improved our VGA processing allowing not only fast and stable VGA screen shot capture but also a Flash video streaming from the presenter’s screen. Now ePresence is good not only for grabbing static Power Point slides but also for various types of animations, drawing, etc. The ePresence Producer is still supported for advanced users.

It’s always great to see people using and talking about ePresence. Most recently, InsideOCULA – the official publication of the Ontario College and University Library association – featured two articles describing how ePresence is being used for educational content delivery and distance courses at Seneca College and the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto:

Using ePresence in Distance Learning
By Wendy Newman, Senior Fellow, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto

“Early on, Gwen identified [ePresence’s] substantial potential as a means to present the core lecture content of the course. Students would be able to see and hear their own instructor, access PowerPoints that captured the major points, view lectures at their own convenience, and re-view them, or selected sections of them, at any time.” (Taken from InsideOCULA, Fall 2008, p. 4)

Using ePresence for video streaming, marketing, and information literacy at Seneca College
By Jane Foo & Jennifer Peters-Lise, Seneca College

“Feedback from the faculty was positive – streaming the video in-house was reliable and fast. In addition, [the instructor] noted that students used the video as a study tool, apparent by the large number of students referring to the videos in their exam answers.” (Taken from InsideOCULA, Fall 2008, pp. 5-6)

This past May, ePresence was also highlighted in the Technology section of the Texas Bar Journal in a list of leading and innovative open source solutions:

Join the Free/Open Source Software Movement
By Joel D. Alleyne

“Several innovative open source software projects provide options for commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software products. These software systems often run on a variety of operating systems; some even run on Windows. Here is a list of my favorite projects…” (Taken from Texas Bar Journal, May 2008, pp. 364-365)

For more information on ePresence’s open source webcasting solution, visit us at http://epresence.tv!