Internet and streaming technologies offer you new and exciting methods of distance learning. To sustain quality and achieve successful delivery of learning material you need a solid platform that constitutes an end-to-end solution.

Let’s establish your options and what you want to be able to do:

• Deliver distance learning over Intranet/Internet.
• Live classes will be broadcasted using streaming video.
• You can have participants in your classroom at the same time.
• You can push out material like OH slides and documents during class.
• Web participants are able to answer/ask questions during the class.
• Previous courses are available on demand after the class has finished.

Now for the equipment you will need.

Video and sound
For the classroom, which may be an ordinary classroom or a simple studio, you will need some video cameras with tripods. You will do fine with ordinary camcorders. For serious production we recommend 2 or 3 camcorders so that you can show different angles, zoom in on blackboards/projected images etc. To record the sound use a wireless clip-on microphone. You will also need a simple video switcher that allows you to easily switch angles. We recommend a good old analogous video switcher, rather than a computer, this is cheaper and offers less things to worry about.

Finally, make sure that you have a separate person to take care of video and sound recording, so that the teacher can concentrate on the education and need not worry about recording.

Encoding
To broadcast your video you first need to convert it into a digital stream. This is a pretty straightforward process that is done by an Encoder, which is basically a computer equipped with video/sound capture hardware. We recommend a dedicated multi stream encoder that has capacity to output many streams in different bitrates. This will accommodate for your viewers different bandwidths.

Presentation
You need webcasting software that will make it possible for your students to see the video, your OH slides and interact with you. A webcasting software such as Webocaster takes care of all layout, presentation and interactivity, and eliminates the need for any special web skills.

We recommend that you use a webbrowser-based software because this enables your students to participate without the need for any special software. Webocaster is entirely web based which means that the teacher simply uses a webbrowser to prepare and control the presentation. (Note: Most webcasting softwares are only partly webbrowser based - they require the producer/controller to install a special licensed software into his computer.)

Distribution
You need a webserver that delivers the webpages that ties the presentation together with video, slides and participant interactivity. Depending on your resources you can use a web hotel or buy your own web server.

If you distribute your video on Intranet you may benefit from a technique called multicasting. In this case you only need one streaming media server to distribute the video to an unlimited number of viewers.

If you distribute your video on Internet, you should set up an account with a CDN such as Playstream, Speedera or Akamai. This is the most cost efficient way to distribute video to several viewers.