Hostile takeovers - Video Conferencing

Video Conferencing

Video Conferencing provides students with the opportunity to learn by participating in a 2-way communication platform. Furthermore, teachers and lecturers from all over the world can be brought to classes in remote or otherwise isolated places. Students from diverse communities and backgrounds can come together to learn about one another. Students are able to explore, communicate, analyze and share information and ideas with one another. Through video conferencing students can visit another part of the world to speak with others, visit a zoo, a museum and so on, to learn. These "virtual field trips" can bring opportunities to children, especially those in geographically isolated areas or the economically disadvantaged. Small schools can use this technology to pool resources and teach courses (such as foreign languages) which otherwise couldn't be offered. Teachers can use this technology to acquire additional college credits for recertification without driving to classes.

Community Colleges and Universities that fail to use modern communications technologies, run the very real risk of falling behind their competition.

Over 60% of face-to-face communication is non verbal. An enriched communications tool, such as videoconferencing can promote an individual’s or a class room’s identity, context and emotional situation.

In addition to presenting my proposal for implementing video conferencing I intend to convince the school and staff members that we need to bring as many of the school staff members as possible on board. We need to make this a team effort and to create a sense of urgency to make this educational tool a success. Creating urgency is about setting deadlines and sticking with them. For a deadline to become important, it must be communicated to the others.

A number of arguments will need to be put forth to convince my school and superiors that we should implement video conferencing, especially since it is expensive and has a degree of technological complexity. Some of these arguments will be about increased productivity, better employee morale, and a more competitive positioning for our school.

Thoughts about overcoming objections to the proposal: What if you could anticipate every possible objection that might raise, and cover those objections before they ever bring them up? And what if, in addition to having foresight into every objection, you could also anticipate any reluctance to make a decision or to take action, allowing you to also anticipate the need to create urgency, so that making the decision to go with your argument becomes easier than staying the current course. We have to not only eliminate negatives; we have to eliminate the neutral. That is, we need to make it easier to say yes then to avoid making a choice. The absence of urgency is in reality just another objection. It means that as much as you’ve handled the objections you know about, you have not inspired the courage or conviction, or just plain interest; it takes to make any individual change the way things are, opting for something else. Your job then is to uncover the hidden objection, the reluctance to change, the reason that the change you propose is better in some quantifiable way then the status quo.

Creating urgency, more than any other sort of objection handling, requires a real focus on understanding the needs, fears, hopes and concerns of the person you are selling to. But when you make the effort to gain that understanding, it is the difference between sitting around waiting for the answer that just never seems to come, and getting started on implementing your project.

Video Conferencing Proposal

How Video Conferencing Can Support Education

Video conferencing technology is all the rage among corporations. Recently educational facilities have begun taking advantage of video conferencing technology to support learning and education. Video conferencing equipment can help facilitate instruction and provide distant learners with a host of resources and access to content providers, teachers, librarians and more. More and more teachers are adopting video conferencing as a method of enhanced communication and instruction. Many California schools are using video conferencing to connect with one another and provide networks carrying large volumes of video and text data to educational facilities, teachers and students. Other people that benefit from video conferencing technology include librarians who can use video conferencing to develop strategies, provide resources and improve the quality of their service and delivery.

Video conferencing And Learning

Video conferencing facilitates learning by allowing remote or distant learners to meet regardless of their location. Students can take classes at multiple universities. In essence classes that are not available at one location may be available at another through video conferencing. Video conferencing can also benefit non traditional students who are not able to attend classes during normal hours. Video conferencing can also be used as a career or employee training tool. Many colleges are now collaborating with local businesses to offer students certification and business training. Expert subject matter delivered from individuals in the field is easily delivered to students using this new technology. Student can also take advantage of mentoring services offered by companies in distant locations using video conferencing technology. The possibilities are virtually endless.

The aim of this report is to put Video Conferencing into a Learning Framework and to take a learner-centered approach rather than a technology-centered view of the problem.

This requires understanding the problem from a number of perspectives:

- Understand the learning framework;
- Understand the technology;
- Understand the role of technology within that framework;
- Understand how to make best use of the technology in fulfilling that role.

The report is divided into two parts. The first describes the technology. It is necessary to understand the limitations and the potential of the technology to be able to evaluate its potential within education. The second part describes a framework for learning and investigates the role of technology within that framework. The report will not provide operating instructions for specific technological systems but will provide general information about how to make best use of Video Conferencing technology.

Video conferencing has great potential for learning in Higher Education. The potential lies in creating greater opportunity for dialogue which facilitates more effective learning than working in isolation. Dialogue may be between tutors and learners or amongst learners. However, the success of video conferencing may well be dependent on factors other than the technology. These factors range from Institutional issues, to cost, to student and tutors attitude to the technology. It is also highly dependent on the teaching methods adopted. There are many unanswered questions from an educational and psychological perspective. The technology is in a transitional state and many may feel it is currently unsuitable for education. This makes video conferencing highly challenging and exciting to some and a nightmare to others. Like the telephone in the past, we as users must learn how to make best use of video conferencing. It may well be the next mode of communication to be universally accepted.

Traditional video conferencing requires expensive, fixed delivery and reception installations and high transmission costs over full band width analogue video channels or high capacity digital channels. Such high grade services allow full two-way audio and video communication between several locations at a price; a more common configuration is that of Interactive TV (Full service out, audio only in). High costs and lack of flexibility has limited the past educational uses in the past to research projects. Recent developments in video compression and codec technology is increasing the use of relatively low bandwidth ISDN using a variety of display formats

Technological Issues

The technologies used to deliver video conferences currently have a dramatic effect on the quality of the communication achievable.

Bandwidth Bandwidth (or baud rate) refers to the amount of information (bits) which can be transmitted along a carrier every second.

Video compression An analogue, full motion, signal takes up a great deal of bandwidth. It can be converted to digital signals (and vice versa) and compressed using codecs. One way to reduce the bandwidth required is to compress the video image; that is digitize the signal and then remove as much extraneous data as possible. There are already several levels of compression being adopted:

Delivering Video Conferences Methods: 1. By standard telephone lines. 2. By ISDN. 3. By satellite broadcast. 4 By co-axial cable. 5 By fiber-optic cable

Standards There are two video conferencing standards: H261 and H320.

Range of equipment

Full screen TV image

Desk Top Video Conferencing (DTVC)

The Physical Environment

The conference equipment should be based in a special room if possible. It can then be available for use when ever it is required rather than setting it up every time it is requested. There is justification for support personnel to maintain and run the equipment and leave the lecturers free to concentrate on the learning process.

Learning

Learning is a social process involving the active construction of new knowledge and understanding through individual learning and group and peer interaction. This means that a key learning skill is that of communication.

Traditional learning: Students turn up to lectures and take notes. If they have a good lecturer they might take part in an active way. They attend tutorials, seminars or laboratories. Their learning is timetabled for them by the Institution. The course is time and location dependent.

Distance Learning: The learner is compelled by distance to assume a degree of autonomy that might be uncomfortable in other circumstances. In the same way the instructor in distance education is compelled to assume a more...supporting, helping role.

Open Learning: Students undertaking an Open Learning Program have neither time nor location dependencies. Thus the opportunity of interacting with peers is extremely limited: who else is taking the course at the same time and progressing at the same pace. This would mean only asynchronous, non-compulsory communication technologies would be applicable.

Why use Video Conferencing: New communication technologies are blurring the distinction between traditional and distant teaching. It has potential uses in both situations. The main issue is to understand where the new technology will have real impact on learning effectiveness. Some of the technology will support a second generation approach, bringing new impact and efficiency to the second generation model. Other aspects of the technology, however, allow the constraints of time and distance to be greatly lessened in bringing the power of small-group face-to-face teaching to the individual desktop, in home or office. The opportunities within open learning are less clear. The reasons for using video conferencing in traditional and distance teaching are very different. There is also a role for video conference on an international basis.

Summary

Anyone considering video conferencing as a solution to an educational need should understand the nature of the technology. The technology is still evolving. ISDN and desktop systems are still problematic and fall-back scenarios should always be in place in case of system failure. This supports the need for specialized technicians who understand the technology and keep it up and running. This would be an added burden on lecturers if they were to maintain the equipment and get the best out of it. The quality of the signal is going to be reduced due to compression and therefore someone who knows how to maximize input in terms of sound and vision would be an indispensable member of staff. To reduce the potential for problems, the equipment at both ends of the connection should be identical.

References

http://www.vsgi.com/Google/landing/videosys/new3.html

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