“In this piece we will discuss how anyone with access to high bandwidth can use off-the shelf software (often freeware) and the Internet to host video teleconferences with distant sites. Our experience has been derived from classes extending over a year between Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon, and Wenzhou Medical College in China. Here we will concentrate largely upon technological issues, and in subsequent pieces will discuss the actual classroom experiences and the pedagogical issues which we faced.
Many often confuse the hype we read daily regarding computing and the Internet with reality, particularly if we have no personal experience with the issue in question. This is especially true, we think, of video teleconferencing. We believe that these applications and technologies are now quite common and fully functional—for others in other places. We are aware that Vice-president Cheney used the technology often following the events of 9/11 and think that we, too, might well do so, if only we had the need.
The reality is far less appealing than the hype, however. Most commercial grade setups utilize dedicated technology and often must rely on multiple long-distance telephone calls to carry data. This means that the initial equipment purchase can run close to ten thousand dollars or more, and that the per-minute costs can easily make an hour-long event cost hundreds of dollars. If you have access to the resources of a major corporation or the Pentagon, then, video teleconferences are easily manageable.
For most businesses, however, and many educational institutions, particularly K-12 ones, these costs are prohibitive ones. Funded with a proof-of concept grant from the Northwest Academic Computing Consortium (NWACC) the Berglund Center set out to share classes via the Internet synchronously (in real time) with our academic partner in China, Wenzhou Medical College.
Part of our purpose was to demonstrate that this could be done cheaply and efficiently with off-the-shelf applications and hardware within the reach of any K-16 educational institution. In addition, presuming that we could solve the obstacles presented by technology, we also wished to learn about the pedagogy appropriate to shared classes.”