Multimedia Services for the Greek Higher Education community Dr. Pantelis Balaouras University of Athens Greek Academic Network GUnet ΝΑΤΙΟΝAL & 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 - national wide virtual learning environment providing and consulting in designing broadband multimedia based services - elearning & Multimedia Support Center - Webcasting - Web based videoconferencing http://voip.gunet.gr http://www.openeclass.org http://mc.gunet.gr
Current scenarios and services Scenarios/models Synchronous e-teaching model - E-teaching classrooms Students from other HEI may attend from the remote e-teaching classroom - Lecture broadcasting Students may attend live the lecture from their home Asynchronous e-learning model - Students may access the organized course material from their home Collaboration - Desktop - Video conferencing rooms Services Video-conferencing - H.323 /SIP Live video streaming Web-based course management Multimedia production Video on Demand Web based videoconferencing H.323/H.320 systems
Web-based course management
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 Open eclass platform
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%) - Students >78.000 Usage Contributed in creating 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
Video production elearning and Multimedia Support Center - 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
Content - Conferences and workshop are broadcasted Webcasting at HEIs - 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
Academic video-lectures portal - http://vod.uoa.gr S/W developed by UoA - in the context of UoA s, Gunet s and Grnet projects. Publishing content - 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
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 Digital TV for the Academic Community 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
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 Video conferencing
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