Multimedia Services for the Greek Higher Education community Dr. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Multimedia Services for the Greek Higher Education community Dr. Pantelis Balaouras University of Athens Greek Academic Network – GUnet ΝΑΤΙΟΝ AL & KAPODISTRIAN UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS

About Greek Academic Network- GUnet • GUnet began as project in 1997 - a joint effort undertaken by all Greek academic institutions towards  the creation of a nation-wide, high speed network  a platform for advanced telematic applications • GUnet was founded as a non-profit civil company in September 2000 - Its members are all the Higher Education and Academic Institutions (HEI)  20 Universities  16 TEI

GUnet – a human network • A network of excellence at the national level  GUnet relies on and uses the experience and the know-how of Network Operations Centers (NOC) • A knowledge dissemination mechanism focusing on supporting faculty members in using e-teaching and multimedia content production services • Website: http://www.gunet.gr

Current GUnet’s Services • deploying and supporting centrally - the Voice over IP network • http://voip.gunet.gr - national wide virtual learning environment • providing and consulting in designing broadband multimedia based services • http://www.openeclass.org - eLearning & Multimedia Support Center - Webcasting - Web based videoconferencing • http://mc.gunet.gr

Current scenarios and services Services Scenarios/models • Synchronous e-teaching model • Video-conferencing - E-teaching classrooms - H.323 /SIP  Students from other HEI may attend from the remote e-teaching classroom • Live video streaming - Lecture broadcasting  Students may attend live the lecture from their home • • Web-based course Asynchronous e-learning model management - Students may access the organized • Multimedia production course material from their home • Video on Demand • Collaboration • Web based - Desktop videoconferencing - Video conferencing rooms • H.323/H.320 systems

Web-based course management

Open eClass platform • Openeclass: - an open source Course Management System by GUnet - links to video clips • Goal: - the incorporation and constructive use of the Internet and web technologies in the teaching and learning process • Website: http://openeclass.org

Usage • Success story ! - 54 installations in the HEI - courses online > 9.500 - registered users > 210.000 - teachers > 4.100 (33% of teachers) • openEclass at UoA - Courses > 2200 - Teachers >1000 (40%) Contributed in creating - Students >78.000 “digital culture” in the Greek Academic community

Lesson learned • Successful deployment model - Centrally coordination for software implementation and support - Distributed s/w development - Locally at HEIs  s/w customization & service provision  user support and training  administration  hosting • An excellent interface to multimedia content

Multimedia production

eLearning and Multimedia Support Center • Video production - studio for recording lectures - Digitization and processing video   teaching material - publishing video presentations • DVD production • Other services - Webcasting - H.323/H320 & Web based video conferencing

eLearning & Multimedia Support Center • Aims at supporting by training - the technical staff of the GUnet member institutions to deploy and support such services - Trainers of academic staff on how to use e-teaching services • Future plan - Establish an eLearning and Multimedia Support Center at each HEI

Webcasting lectures  Live streaming  Recording  Publishing

Webcasting at HEIs • Content - Conferences and workshop are broadcasted - No regular broadcasting of lectures • Most universities use their own video streaming server • Gunet provides a service for announcing webcasts - http://vod.gunet.gr/announce/ • GRnet provides video streaming server at national level - http://vod.grnet.gr/ 14

Live streaming at UoA • Dpt. of Informatics and Telecommunication - 3 classrooms, 5 year 40 % lectures are broadcasted - Recently 2 more classrooms were added - Current status  Migration from Real Network technologies (GRnet’s helix server) to flash based  Recording option is currently added  Scheduler is added  http://webcast.uoa.gr • Plans for 30 classrooms

Live streaming at UoA • Lecture broadcasting and recording • One way transmission of: - teacher’s video - audio - slides - whiteboard • No interaction with students

Publishing content • Academic video-lectures portal - http://vod.uoa.gr • S/W developed by UoA - in the context of UoA’s, Gunet’s and Grnet’ projects. - earlier versions are installed in GRnet’s and Gunet’s vod servers • Supports: - Formats: realvideo (Helix DNA), wmf (in Windows), flv formats - Dublin core metadata • Pilots - Enable restricted access according the Shibboleth release attributes  e.g., only users from Univ. of Athens, Dpt of Informatics can access a video clip - Interfaces to GRID infrastructure for transcoding video files and archiving 18

Future plan • Promote the lecture broadcasting and recording to all HEIs - Provide the s/w and service following the successful model of openEclass • Create points of content aggregations - At Gunet & Grnet level • Adopt Open Source Software - Opencast project community  http://opencastproject.org - Evaluate, adapt/customize the s/w to the local needs, if required

Digital TV for the Academic Community http://iptv.grnet.gr • Live sessions  Hellenic (Greek) Parliament  Teleteaching classroom GUnet (HD) • DVB-T channels  ERT S.A CINE+, PRISMA+ channels • Recorded events as scheduled program  2 GRnet channels 20

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Future plans • More channels • Support: - H.264 encoding - flash player 22

IPTV at Pan-european Level • Broadcasting over the Pan European Academic and Research Network (GEANT) : - Content created by universities and research (500 +) - Live sessions from the European and national parliaments (28 +) - Free satellite programs .. (300 +) - DVB-T channels (200 + ?) • An possible huge R&D testbed for networked multimedia • Is it feasible and at which cost? 23

Video conferencing

Video conferencing • e-teaching classrooms - GUnet created in 2003 a state of the art e-teaching classroom - Consulted other HEIs how to create their e-teaching classroom - At least one e-teaching classroom at each HEI - GRnet’s and HEIs’ Multipoint Control Units are exploited • Web-based video conference by GUnet - To all HEI

About Greek Academic Network (GUnet)

Future planning • Upgrade audio-visual and video-conferencing equipment for supporting High Definition (HD) video • Upgrade the GUnet web-based video-conferencing service to support application sharing

Thank you ! Contact details: P.Balaouras@noc.uoa.gr +30 210 7275603