Our Internet2 Day demo went quite well (a few photos here– I actually did present despite the picture of me in apparent stasis). Our basic question was: if you had Internet2 connectivity right now (we do in fact have access to Internet2 bandwidth, but since it doesn’t go anywhere except to other Internet2 participating institutions it isn’t particularly useful) what would you do with it?
Doing a demo on this question is a bit tricky– we don’t spend time developing for extremely high-bandwidth, so anything we did would have to be theoretical, but it was important to me that we tie it to real practices. So we basically came up with a demo that talked about creating a unified interface that would pull together the three main segments of a future classroom interaction:
- “big data”, video, visualization space
- interactive, synchronous classroom space
- interactive collaborative space
All three of these are achievable now, but bringing them together cohesively is the big-bandwidth dream. Not incidentally, the three pieces align perfectly with the “arc of technologies”: broadcast, transaction, and transformation.
My idea to do real-time scanning electron microscopy and analysis was scuttled because the remotely controlled scanning electron microscope was being used for a different session right after ours. So we decided on a hypothetical class bringing together remote biology and geography students to study the Avian Flu. The basic layout was:
- Center-stage was the big data channel for scientific presentation (lab techniques, field techniques, visualization of the virus, microscopy, and GIS visualization of viral spread). I provided a narration of a few minutes of video presenting these modes, some simulated.
- Stage right we had the Elluminate! live classroom where I worked with the remote students on analysing the potential spread and detection of Avian Flu in relation to population centers and migratory bird routes from Southeast Asia. The “remote” students were actually in the audience on laptops representing students from all over Alaska, some along bird routes, some near high population centers, some neither. With Elluminate they interacted using voice, whiteboard interactions, text chat, and various presence indicators (hand raising, emoticons, etc).
- Stage Left was a GroupSystems collaboration session facilitated by colleague Bob Briggs allowed the students to collaborate on a divergent brainstorming session about facts and factors based on what they had learned that were important to everyone as well as to their specific location, then a convergent session to create a clean list for further learning, research, study, writing, etc. with a goal of creating a place-based resource on Avian Flu for their communities.
There were only two minor technical flubs on the part of the sound and light stage crew, but they were basically invisible to the audience anyway. The important things were we were on-time, the transitions all worked seamlessely, and we were able to hammer home the most important messages: creating a learning environment that allowed for creation of new meaning, place-based relevance in the learning environment, reaching a distributed cohort across disciplines, real-life examples of the educational arc, that much of this was available now and that Internet2 could be about more than just video (more on that in my next post). I may have ranted a little bit towards the end in reaction to earlier speakers that kept talking about making the location of users irrelevant (equal access) where I want to see the location take on a new, important relevance in learning!