{"id":15796,"date":"2010-09-16T09:43:09","date_gmt":"2010-09-16T13:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=15796"},"modified":"2020-08-28T12:39:46","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T16:39:46","slug":"real-time-learning-live-from-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/real-time-learning-live-from-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Real-time Learning Live From Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"
On Nov. 11, humanities professor Bruce Janz and anthropology professor Rosalyn Howard will leave for South Africa, where Janz will teach the remainder of his African Humanities course and Howard will teach the remainder of her African Societies and Cultures course.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s Skype on steroids,\u201d Janz said of how they plan to teach their courses. \u201cWe can have B-roll material, we can have PowerPoint and slides, and we can edit that in seamlessly in a live broadcast.\u201d<\/p>\n
The overseas portion will be taught through a series of 90-minute live webcasts using wireless cameras to feed video to a video mixer. This will allow the professors to introduce the video clips, slides and other media to the students via satellite.<\/p>\n
The trip will begin in Johannesburg and continue on through Swaziland, Durban, Grahamstown and then end in Capetown.<\/p>\n
Howard first saw the potential for this technology during a trip to Bermuda in the summer of 2008.<\/p>\n
Phil Peters, a film and digital media professor at Âé¶¹Ó³»´«Ã½, was on a cave-diving and conservation trip in Bermuda with Interactive Expeditions and learned that Howard would be conducting research in the country during the same period.<\/p>\n
Peters invited Howard to see the work he was doing with this technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was totally fascinated by what they were doing,\u201d said Howard.<\/p>\n
She also said that, as a cultural anthropologist, the possibility for her to be able to have contact with people in rural locations and urban locations at the same time and to be able to broadcast the interactions in real-time would serve as a great learning tool.<\/p>\n
Though the original goal was to do a full-term trip from Cairo to Capetown, Janz said the original plan had to be scaled back due to various reasons such as the concerns over the financial cost of a semester-long trip.<\/p>\n
Peters, who has been responsible for laying the groundwork for the project, will travel with Janz and Howard to provide technical support for the equipment that will be used.<\/p>\n