Camera snapshot of Anderson Cooper interviewing Will.i.am via telepresent technology on CNN during the 2008 presidential election coverage. CC licensed photo by l'olliepop, "wtf is this, the future???"

Educause has recently published a review of telepresence as the latest in their 7 Things You Should Know About… series. What is telepresence? Telepresence uses audio and video technology to simulate the experience of being in the same room for people who are separated by distance. From Educause:

Telepresence refers to the application of complex video technologies to give geographically separated participants a sense of being together in the same location. These systems use high-definition cameras feeding to life-size, HD displays with high-fidelity acoustics that, in many cases, localize sound to image, simulating the effect of each voice coming from the video display for each participant. In sophisticated telepresence rooms, the furniture and displays are arranged in ways that further enhance the simulation—participants sit at a conference table and see high-resolution video of participants in remote locations at similar tables, allowing participants to imagine sharing a single table.

This level of technology still carries a hefty price tag, and requires a special room designed to accommodate the equipment. At the moment, telepresent meetings are most common for larger corporations, but a few schools are beginning to incorporate the venue. For a program that would otherwise spend a sizable portion of its budget on travel to conferences and face-to-face meetings, the cost might prove to be an investment.

As the technology continues to develop, telepresence might become less expensive — and more widespread in online education. Some benefits in addition to conference-style meetings would be a wider array of possible learning solutions for online courses in arts and sciences. The software could be used to create virtual simulations for experiential learning.

It will be interesting to see what effects this technology may have on distance education in the future.

7 Things You Should Know About Telepresence (Educause summary page)

Direct link to the .pdf article

Related posts:

1. Watchitoo combines asynchronous video with synchronous chat The past couple weeks have been quiet on this blog,...
2. Archiving the Feed: December 2009 Twitter Posts by wisepedagogy [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="cc-licensed photo, Lunch Time! via Flickr...
3. “The Class” video parodies classroom technology, “The Office”-style This parody of The Office tells the mock-umentary-style story of...
4. Free Webinars During National Distance Learning Week: November 9-13 Beginning Monday, online programs and schools across the United States...
5. News Bits: Nook vs. Kindle, Learning via wrong answers, ZoomIt tool The following are just a few highlights from today’s news...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 9:10 am and is filed under Articles, News in Online Education, Synchronous Learning, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.