Yesterday an AverMedia QuickPlay came in the mail from Troxell Communications. We ordered one to see if it would work for our RUS Grant building carts. This will allow the teachers to hook up a computer to share their presentations for the project VCs with other classes.
I’m really pleased with the little unit. It’s so easy. I tested a Mac and a PC and they worked great connecting S-Video into the document camera input on our Polycom VSX 7000s.
Now I know some of you are thinking, why aren’t you using H.239? Because my experience with it has been less than ideal. I’ve seen it fail most of the time it’s used. Most of our connections are with everyone under the sun, and so we never know what type of unit we’re connecting to or if they can receive H.239. I’ve seen the following points of failure:
- The endpoint can’t receive H.239
- H.239 is turned off on the endpoint
- The firewall is blocking H.239 traffic
- The bridge/MCU in the conference path is blocking H.239 or doesn’t have the feature turned on
So, I’m sticking with the tried & true scan converter method of hooking up a computer. Of course the easiest method is to zoom the camera in on a laptop screen. No wires! 🙂 Call me old-fashioned, but hey, it works consistently with whoever you connect to!
About Janine Lim
Janine Lim, PhD, currently serves as associate dean for online higher education in the School of Distance Education at Andrews University, in Berrien Springs, MI. She and her team support over 200 online courses, provide training for faculty teaching online, and work with the campus infrastructure support of online learning. Her department also provides educational technology and Moodle support for faculty and students. In addition, Janine is responsible for the faculty and courses of the Consortium of Adventist Colleges and Universities. Janine has taught over 15 unique graduate educational technology classes online numerous times over the past 15 years, with some classes attracting participants from all over the world. Her undergraduate teaching includes social media courses for communication and digital media majors. Janine has served on the board of the United States Distance Learning Association since April 2015.
Prior to her work at Andrews University, Janine coordinated distance education for 22 K12 school districts in southwest Michigan for 14 years. In that position, as one of the co-founders of TWICE, Michigan’s K12 Videoconferencing Organization, Janine has spearheaded popular international K12 videoconference projects such as Read Around the Planet and MysteryQuest. While still serving on the board of TWICE, she was instrumental in designing and implementing the CAPspace website for collaborative videoconference projects. Janine also served on a team of Michigan educational technology trainers providing a workshop called ATA Technology Academy.
Her current online learning research interests include successful teacher behaviors, quality online discussions, and student activity patterns in self-paced courses.
Videoconferencing Out on a Lim 
We also went through the hassle of h.239, and decided to discontinue using it.
After that, we stuck with the tried and true method of scan converters for years.
Quality has become an issue, however, since the video is getting compressed, and in the end, doesn’t look as good as it could.
For the last year we’ve been using gotomeeting to broadcast our PC content, and the quality is top notch. Gotomeeting basically provides the exact same services as Webex, although it is waaaay cheaper. Try broadcasting content that way – it saves the headache of setting up a scan converter last second, and is much higher quality. The only main caveat is that full motion video (dvds, youtube, etc.) does not transmit that way.
-Andrew Baldwin
Joe Rindone Regional Technology Center
San Diego County Office of Education
Andrew
Have you researched BrightCom technology. There is not need to convert the data. You can share the content and your video from a single appliance inside your firewall to many endpoints across your network or through the web using a browser. If you would like to discuss this further you can call me at 877.483.9737.
So Andrew, what does this look like in a classroom? A VC system and TV/Projector and the content on another PC and projector? Can you describe it more? What are some ways that you’re using this in the classroom?