Tools and Methods for Distance Education

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The following applications, applets, tools, utilities, and methods were developed by the Dept. of CSE at the University of Washington over the last several years to aid in our efforts at distance education. They are described and made available for download here in the hope that they will be useful to others who may be implementing streamed media or distance education facilities of their own.  

• Introduction, Overview and Related Links.
• UW Classroom Presenter  Enables a presentation in a distributed classroom environment, combining PowerPoint with the annotation capabilities provided by the Tablet PC. 
• ConferenceXP Windows Media Archive Transcoder. Post-process SQL Server-resident conference and presentation data for streaming and off-line use
• ConferenceXP to Windows Media Gateway    In a partnernship with MSR the Windows Media Gateway was developed to provide a Windows Media interface and archiving capability to a live ConferenceXP event.
• ConferenceXP Web Viewer This is the client application for Windows Media Gateway or ArchiveTranscoder content.  It embeds the Windows Media Player, and additionally contains code to display a ConferenceXP presentation including slides and tablet annotations.
• Capturing and Synchronizing Slides with WMV. This page describes tools and methodologies used to capture high-resolution display images from a presentation system using VGA capture hardware, and to build a WMV archive with synchronized slides in a semi-automated fashion.  The use of VGA capture means that nothing needs to be installed on the presentation system, and any type of presentation can be supported.
• Script Command Management and Post-Production Tools.  The script command management tool set consists of a client and a server which together enable flexible and fail-safe collection of PowerPoint presentation timing information, and also optionally transmission of that information to a live Windows Media Encoder.  The associated tools aid in the preparation of PowerPoint slide images, and transform saved slide timing data so that it can be easily integrated with the stored stream file. 
• Image Capture Script Command Client.  Designed to interoperate with the script command server (part of the management tool set above), this tool is designed for the scenario where the slides or supporting material for a talk either are not Powerpoint, or are Powerpoint, but are not available long enough in advance of the talk.  The tool copies a series of stills (in our case, frame captures from a scan converter or second camera) to a web accessible location.  Then it constructs and sends the corresponding script commands to be embedded in the media stream.
• Whiteboard and Image Display Applet . This Java applet reads a set of stored data representing a recorded interaction with an electronic whiteboard, and responds to events generated from a user's interactions with a Windows Media stream, and script commands embedded in the stream.  It manages a display area which may present the whiteboard interaction or a slide or arbitrary stored image, and keeps the display in sync with the media stream.
• Whiteboard Data Logging and Post-Production Tools .  This Whiteboard application and tool set enable the collection and preparation of data for the Whiteboard Client applet.   The Whiteboard application is designed to work with the SmartBoard (tm).
• Timed Screen Snapshot Utility, and Post-Production Tools .  When run on a PC the snapshot utility will capture screen images at a user defined frequency.  The postproduction tools build images and script commands from the raw data so that they can be easily integrated with a Windows Media stream.
• JPEG Image to PowerPoint File Conversion Utility .  This tool builds a PowerPoint file from a directory containing JPEG images.   If used together with a tool such as GhostScript, the PowerPoint file can be built from a Postscript source.
• An Experiment with Multimedia Annotations.  This experimental annotation system permits users to attach data to a multimedia stream. The data is tagged to a particular time in the stream and stored in a database so that it may be played back by subsequent users. Typical annotataions would be questions, answers and comments about the stream content. In this way, a stream may gain educational value simply by being used.

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