CU-SeeMe is a video, audio, chat,
and typed text software that allows users to interact with others that
have this software.
When this software was first developed
by Cornell University and then later White Pine Software purchased the
rights to the software.
This software is incredible for
allowing people to have conferences over the internet no matter what the
distance. The conference allow live audio and video feed so it is
like the Jetson's telephone in that space age cartoon that always had technology
way more advanced then what we ever thought possible.
Two different versions from this company interested me for education. CU-SeeMe software would allow a class with one computer to interact with another class in a different city, state, country.... The ways in which these classes could share information is endless. They could do projects together, gather information on other regions, or they could compete in scholastic bowl type trivia games. I know a teacher at Rantoul City Schools used this software with his fifth grade class and connected with a fifth grade class in Montana. The two classes then arranged times to video conference, the teachers arranged for the classes to weight and structure project together by building bridges. Each class had 4 teams and they worked on these bridges while watching the other class to see their progress. Then they shared results at the end of the project. I wasn't able to see this in person but it sounded great and got me thinking what projects my 7th graders could do with video conferencing. This software will work on Windows or Macintosh. This is something that schools can easily do with their existing equipment and a low cost video camera. White Pine Software does have education price breaks where you can get a copy for $35.00 not bad to start off and experiment with.
The second version that looked interesting
is ClassPoint.
This software allows video conferencing but in a much more controlled way
for education. ClassPoint is instructor controlled earning environment
with web based class setup and scheduling. It allows everyone in
the class to see and hear each other at the same time. It also allows
interactive quizzes on the web and chats.
The only down side to this is the
price for 25 user license is $12,995.00 and it has to be set up on a Windows
NT server. Except for the price of the software this sounds terrific
for distance learning. A lot of schools are running NT servers so
installing and running the software would be easy the only resource a school
would be lacking is the financial one.
I found these two products very interesting and I think they will become more common in school in a few years.