Chromebox for meetings, a $999 video conferencing system from Google | Ars Technica.
This looks like this could be a pretty interesting product. Our group is doing quite a few Google hangouts and improved audio and video quality might be very appreciated.
Truth be told, the question is really if you can ever avoid being struck twice but that makes for a lousy title.
I recently wrote a post about bringing an Echo360 pilot online in about 3 weeks. ECHO360 INSTALL. CHOAS THEORY IN PRACTICE
I could go into a detailed post listing all the specific steps taken on the Mediasite pilot but really, the installation process was identical.
One other note. The recording appliance has a power button on the front. You know what pushing that button would do? Shut down the computer. We went into control panel and disabled that option. I haven’t tried but my guess is that pushing and holding for 4 seconds will shut that sucker down! If it goes production I’m putting a vented cover over the front since the system is accessible to the end user.
The UI is much better on Mediasite. Not just the admin stuff either. The player interface is much nicer. The editing tools are more robust and more user friendly. I suspect that the 2 companies are going to be much more competitive in 6-9 months but that’s currently where things stand.
Quite frankly I was amazed that I was able to get one lecture capture system up and running in three weeks given the infrastructure and notorious headaches I’ve encountered integrating stuff around here.
When I remember that I actually did two lecture capture systems in three weeks, I feel all powerful!
I’m not recommending you try it though. Your mileage may vary…
By the time we wound our way through the procurement process and actually received our Echo360 appliance, I had about 3 weeks before classes started. In that time I had to do the following:
Plenty of time!
Oh. Did I mention that I was also doing the exact same thing with a Mediasite system and the exact same deadline?
Turns out that while it was hectic, it all came together. No 80 hour weeks or anything either. Just busy. I had tremendous support and assistance from my colleagues that maintain the classroom AV systems in the learning spaces group as well as the team that manages the LMS.
For the pilot Echo360 is hosting everything for us. They take care of content distribution and they are responsible for the servers. If I had to do that as well, there’s no way I could have pulled this off.
About 2 hours after class is over, students can view the recordings.
And about a week before the semester started they came out with new software (5.3) and I rolled the dice. I had them upgrade me to the newest version since there was no content and really nothing to lose. It went well and I had no issues. I’ll say it: I got lucky.
I don’t have any experience with working in academia outside of Notre Dame but I’d say if I can do it here, surely it can be done anywhere.
Be not afraid my friends!
If there’s one thing I’ve heard repeatedly in the 6 years I’ve been here is that students don’t read their email. Or at least not on a timely basis. Or not as timely as faculty and administrators would like. despite the difference in expectations, the reality is that sometimes faculty and staff need to send an alert to students and ensure that they receive and read it almost immediately. Email is just not guaranteed to be received, seen, or read.
We live in Indiana and winters are not pleasant. Like a root canal is not pleasant but the campus almost always stays open. Prior to this winter it’s only closed once in the previous 10 years. Last week our local community declared a snow emergency. Yes that’s a thing and it’s every bit as pleasant as it sounds. It’s illegal to be out driving unless you’re “essential personnel”. Offenders can get $2500 tickets for violating the order. Notre Dame closed for a day and a half. I’m sure many more classes have been cancelled due to faculty not having child care or being unable to get to campus.
Wouldn’t it be great if a professor could ensure that students actually received the communication about class being cancelled if the campus was open but they couldn’t make it to class?
I decided to start a small pilot to allow faculty to send texts to their students. It’s completely opt-in and students that don’t participate are not at a disadvantage. It’s simply an easier and faster way to hear from the professors. Faculty also made it clear that students would only receive 1-2 texts per week so they wouldn’t be overwhelmed with texts. It can also be used for class cancellations, mistakes that need to be clarified, reminders about deadlines, etc.
After doing some research, we decided to direct a few faculty to remind101 and have a few faculty use the in-house system of blackboard connect.
Remind101 was dead simple. I pointed the faculty to the site and told them to sign up for an account. I told them that I wanted them to figure it out on their own since it’s designed to be a self service system. It’s proven to be just that. Self service. (Those may be the greatest words I have ever typed.) Their site has great tutorials and the system is very easy for students and faculty alike. Using this system faculty never see the students cell numbers. Reminders can be scheduled to go out at future dates and times but it’s not currently possible to set a repeating reminder. The biggest complaint is that you can’t use the texting app on your phone. You have to use either the web-site or an app on your phone. I think that’s a feature so you don’t accidentally text your class something that was meant for your wife.
Blackboard connect was more of a challenge. On our system, there’s not currently a way to have students enroll themselves. That means faculty would either have to enter them manually or we could do some sort of import. Obviously we chose the latter. To collect the student information we created a google form where students could enter their name, email and cell phone. Then we imported that file into blackboard. Pro-tip: On Office 2011 on a mac there’s a difference between a csv and a windows csv. Once will import into the system and the other will result in you feeling badly about your skills.
After the numbers were imported I had to create some pretty thorough documentation to walk them through the process of sending a text. It’s not exactly intuitive since it’s designed to allow multiple forms of communication. Email, SMS, Voice, Pager (Really?), Facebook, Twitter, RSS and CAP. All of that flexibility adds confusion.
Another issue is the setup on the server itself. In an effort to implement the pilot more quickly, we chose to have all of the instructors on a single site. That means that they can all see all the courses and potentially send a message to the wrong class. It hasn’t happened. Yet. I’m sure it will happen. Currently we’re trying to get our site configured to allow us to use a mobile app which may make things easier for faculty.
Besides complaints about the Blackboard Connect UI, I just got my first bit of feedback about the pilot from one of the faculty participating.
Remind101 is awesome. If I want to send from my phone it is a simple click. If I go to the web interface it is user-friendly and takes me exactly to the place to write and send the message… I’d love to use Remind101 every semester. Importantly, I’m seeing great results from the students in both class. The number of ‘late’ assignments and “I’m sorry, I forgot all about this homework” has dropped considerably.
That’s pretty damn encouraging for a project that:
I’ll update the results of our pilot at the end of the semester.
I was fortunate when I started investigating lecture capture. My boss was able to secure a fairly decent amount of funding for some initial pilots and product testing. Enough to purchase 2 pilots, some cameras and so forth. That was at the end of July. Classes started at the end of August. After about 6 weeks it was time to ask for funding for next year based on the results of the testing I had done.
Testing? Results? Conclusions?
I will not allow this tiny precious life that I have breathed into existence by sheer force of will to be snuffed out by bureaucracy and administrativia!
Ok, perhaps it wasn’t that bad. But they did want to know how much money I would need to continue the program. That question always seemed innocent enough until they saw how much I was asking for. Then the question became “Who’s asking for this and why?” And therein lies the problem.
You see, IT started this project, not the provost. I’m fortunate to have a boss that had some vision and was able to exercise some thought leadership here. He looked around and saw that lecture capture was an area where IT needed to start making some progress rather than waiting for someone to come to us and ask for it.
Nobody asked for a Model-T. Nobody asked for an iPad. Nobody asked for New Coke. Wait. That’s a bad example but I think the point stands. We saw a product that students and faculty need, they just didn’t know it yet. We wanted to build it and be ready. For a change we wanted to be proactive as opposed to reactive.
But apparently in academia, sponsorship and “the ask” are extremely important. I’m likely to get funding for another year but it was made clear that something of this nature, even though it’s an IT related project, the funding request should be coming from the academic side, not the administrative side. Next year,we’d better have some great academic support for this service or it will wither on the vine. If the students and faculty are the ones that benefit, they should be the ones that ask for it. It makes sense and I understand it, but it makes it that much harder.
I now have a common problem in academia:
It’s a vicious cycle. I don’t have much usage of the pilot systems. Much of the usage I do have is a result of me asking people that are scheduled in the rooms where the equipment is installed if they’d be willing to participate in a pilot. It’s not like I have faculty beating on my door asking me to record their lectures for the benefit of these poor students. If I did, that would make it easy to get the funding I need.
What I need are champions for the system. People that will take this to the provost and ask them to fund it because they believe it is important and it will have demonstrable benefits to the students and the academy. The challenge is, will they do so if they are asked to pay for it?
It’s hard to get people to buy into something they can’t see. Especially when there aren’t specific metrics that can be tracked. If I had hard analytical data that showed using lecture capture systems increased GPAs by a statistically significant amount, this might be easier. As it is, I have to find people that are pretty progressive and are willing to take a risk on technology. And while Faculty are great advocates, many of them are kind of take it or leave it. Especially those with tenure that might be the most influential. I get it. This doesn’t directly benefit them. What I need are Department Chairs and Deans to really get behind this. I need them to ask their faculty to use these systems and help us build usage and demand.
And students. Oh God do I need the students. This is a technology that ultimately benefits them more than anyone else. They’re the customer. In a perfect world I could start trying to attract them to the system and build demand for the system from the bottom up. I could present this to the student government and they could go and start asking for a widespread deployment. But I can’t put myself in a position where the students are demanding a product that I can’t deliver. A poor rollout could sour the opinion and ruin the impression of the product for years.
I’ve got to build a snowball. With no snow. And no hill.