The final part of research I did before my report was finding out what the uses would be if new college did install a video conferencing system. This would be the most useful part of research and would contribute most to my decision if the college should or shouldn’t.
Findings-
Cost
The cost of video conferencing is extremely high if you want lots of bandwidth, which will make the sound and video quality of the conference much better. But there is a cheaper option, which is, to use normal video conferencing, which is not a very good quality and is often slow and jumps a lot. Another way to reduce costs is not to purchase one for every computer in the room. One per room is enough with a speaker system.
Setting up
Setting up video conferencing is a simple process that most students will pick up after being shown once or twice. The computer does all of the hard work. The camera and program that the video conference runs thorough need to be set up by the student or teacher. All they have to do is enter an IP address of the computer or location they wish to have the conference with or connect to a server which will connect them to the other participants.
Ease of Use
The quality and ease of use of simple USB or Fire wire video cameras has improved significantly over the last few years. It is one of the few areas in ICT where you can get a really useful product and software for less than Australian $250. On more advanced models additional features are provided such as auto focus, security monitoring and control from remote locations to suit use as a web cam. During 2003 Fire wire based video cameras became more common. An example of this is the iSight camera, which has excellent picture quality, auto focus, auto exposure and a built in noise-suppressing microphone.
Video Conferencing is easy to use once it has been set up and is running and the students have to do nothing once the conference is on they just have to talk and the other people in the conference will respond and the program that runs the conference needs no maintenance and runs in the background.
Equipment
Web Cam
Headset or speakers
Web cam software
College Uses
- Professional development of staff
- dialogue between foreign language students
- collaboration between teachers or students
- sharing of educational resources
- develop real time (immediate) communication skills
- global 'show-and-tell'
- mentoring of individual students
- direct teacher interaction for isolated students
- talking to international experts
- sharing experiences with students from different cultures
- enhancing travel buddy projects
- discovering alternative views about the news
- conducting interviews
- learning about remote environments
- enhancing distance learning
Conclusion-
From all my research into video conferencing there reasons that the college should have it installed and reasons why the college shouldn’t have it.
For starters the cost of video conferencing seems extremely high for a decent connection that will produce good quality conferences, up to £50 for just one hour. Now if the college class has 30 students in it and each time they use a video conference it costs £50 that’s a lot of money especially because that’s only one class in the college so cost wise video conferencing is not a good idea.
Setting up video conferencing is not a difficult task and after the students have successfully done this once I think they will get the hang of it and be able to do again and again hassle free. So from a setting up point of view video conferencing is a good idea.
The Equipment needed to set video conferencing up in college is also a plus for the college. Each computer will need a web cam which are fairly cheap and are getting cheaper these days you can pick one up on the market for as little as £30 or the college could just put one in every class room which would be shared by pupils and teachers it can work either way. For the sound each computer would need speakers, which are around £10 for a standard set, or there could be one set of speakers in each classroom to be shared again. For the microphone some web cams come with a built in one and the same with the headphones, you can get some with a built in speaker peace. So equipment can be set up easily depending on the college budget.
Staff training also supports the idea for college video conferencing because it is very easy to learn so staff training would be cheap and the students would be able to pick it up after being shown a couple of times.
And finally the uses that the college would get out of video conferencing are a plus as well. The college would get the following good point out of setting up a system:
- Professional development of staff
- - Dialogue between foreign language students
- - Collaboration between teachers or students
- - Sharing of educational resources
- - Develop real time (immediate) communication skills
- - Global 'show-and-tell'
- - Mentoring of individual students
- - Direct teacher interaction for isolated students
- - Talking to international experts
- - Sharing experiences with students from different cultures
- - Enhancing travel buddy projects
- - Discovering alternative views about the news
- - Conducting interviews
- - Learning about remote environments
- - Enhancing distance learning
Recommendations-
From all the research I have done and the report I have created I would recommend that new college do install a video conferencing system. It would benefit the students a lot and allow them to gain a more extensive knowledge of the technology available to them today and there knowledge of I.C.T. Things can be done to make the system more cost affective such as limiting the amount of equipment in each class room and it would enable the teachers to work more freely and easier.
