Virtually Perfect
Joseph C. Panettieri,
University Business,
Jun 29, 2004
This is a very good article, one of the best of the year and certainly the best I've seen on this topic at this level. It describes how various universities are building and using mobile production suites to capture and display learning resources (such as, say, classroom lectures), taking as its point of departure the Georgia Institute of Technology's Big Bertha system. The author has done his homework, describing such systems not simply in general terms, but by naming specific parts and even brands used by different universities. Thus we know not only that Georgia uses cameras to record streaming video, but that it "uses Sony EVI D100 PTZ cameras and Vortex mixers in 21 digital classrooms [which] feed video signals to Dell Inc. Optiplex GX-270 PCs equipped with ViewCast Corp.'s Osprey 230 video-capture cards [and from them to] a Sun Microsystems (www.sun.com) enterprise server running RealNetworks Inc.'s Helix Universal Server." This level of detail (and note that abbreviations are explained and jargon is kept to a minimum) give the reader a precise picture of how these systems are being set up, how much, even, that the different components cost.
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