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RDE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

1. When the instruction was coming from Kilpisj rvi we were forced to be quiet because otherwise we couldn t have heard anything ourselves the lessons were pretty hard They pupils in Kilpisj rvi also sensed that the teacher could see their every move so they had to behave themselves correctly In the conventional lessons with the local teachers they acted like pupils usually do in Finland They were much more lively and informal The pupils in Kilpisj rvi experienced that the teacher gave as much attention to them as to the pupils in Helsinki sometimes even more The teacher also acted equally towards both groups The pupils felt that it was as easy to answer the questions in the distance lessons as in the conventional lessons There was some variation as to how pupils experienced the way the teacher shifted his or her attention from the pupils in Helsinki to Kilpisj rvi Usually 1t was easy to notice the target of the teacher s attention All the pupils found that 1 distance lessons were not very enjoyable 2 the tempo was slower in the distance lessons than in the conventional lessons 3 due to technical difficulties distance lessons were not as fluent or flexible as conventional lessons 4 there was not a lot of interaction between the pupils groups 5 distance lessons were regarded as more peaceful than the other lessons The Kilpisj rvi project seems to have succeeded at least to some extent in creating a new vir
2. Capture Settings E A window to File Profile E A scrolling window g Window Clipboard E An object on the screen E The entire screen Hotkey Global lt Ctrl Shift P gt A Other Capture Profiles 6 Mode El ABI E amp mage E A freehand region Text Video Web E A menu with time delay option A a Text rom a window hee LJ 8 Record a video ofthe screen Output Clipboard ka All images from a Web site E A DirectX application e g games Filters A My Profiles 1 Options y ao an cy Window Clipboard O Add New Profile Wizard ka Save Profile Press lt Ctrl Shift P gt to capture Figure 8 Snag It interface See reference 45 The price is 39 95 can be found at reference 27 It is also possible to download a free trial version for 30 days at reference 28 WEBEX RECORDER Information obtained at reference 14 This program is studied as an alternative to Camtasia The program can record Windows applications or the desktop in use and the recordings can be saved on the computers hard disk WebEX Recorder can be used to record video of user interactions in any application the computer s desktop or a WebEx meeting If record audio is chosen WebEX Recorder automatically synchronizes audio with recorded video WebEx Recorder saves your recording to a file in the WebEx Recording Format WRF which has a wrf extension Depending on the type of recording that is desired one
3. The book about videoconference systems Veijo Meisalo 1996 relates to a case where the tiny village school in Kilpisj rvi north western Finnish Lapland is connected through an ISDN link to the Teacher Training School of the University of Helsinki some 1000 km away The following is a summary of the results and experiences that were found in that project We found the following interesting information from a pedagogical viewpoint Distance education can support small groups with some special needs such as foreign language religion or cultural learning for refugees For pupils in hospitals and isolated islands distance learning can be the only possible way to communicate It is hard to find ways to support talented children For all the schools it is very important to teach pupils to use modern communication and information technologies Distance education clearly helps to continue and develop the idea of educational equality The aims of the Kilpisjarvi project are 1 To develop suitable teaching methods for distance education by using communication and information technologies to integrate remote classrooms 2 To familiarize students and teachers with the use of information technologies 3 To open up new learning perspectives for all participants involved 4 To find out novel ways to support small rural schools and communities Some personal characteristics are more suitable for audio conferencing positive attitude adaptabilit
4. tif format and this is a problem since the output scanner files are tif files The White board does not support video which is important for the RDE system To solve that problem one could play the video in the Video window instead of the video camera This can be done by changing the source of that window It should be selected in the option Capture Device the next source Windows WDM Image Capture Win 32 In addition arguably the worst drawback is the price There are several ways of obtaining a license for Marratech E meeting Portal the server software can either be bought or it may be leased It can also be on some markets bought per usage week hour etc There are also cost differences depending if it is for educational or industrial customers The price for two e meeting rooms with an unlimited number of simultaneous users will cost roughly 90000 SEK per year including all new updates of the software The client Marratech Pro is free of charge and can be distributed to as many people as you want this information has been obtained from the department of Customer Relations of Marratech sales marratech com To sum up the software is very expensive To solve the application sharing problem another solution was tested The solution involved a combination between Marratech and Netmeeting NetMeeting must be brought up first The Teacher1 51 RDE Software Development computer runs NetMeeting and brings
5. Share First choose the type of capture images text video print out entire Web image collecting Next capture the desired area windows regions object menus and more Edit and annotate the capture right within the Preview Windows for fast convenient changes Changes colour size dpi and many other aspects of the screen capture Send the screen capture to a file an email the Clipboard the printer and even the Web Supports GIF JPG TIF BMP Capture modes image capture text capture video capture Web capture and printer capture The most popular captures more than 40 ways to capture e Screen capture everything that shows on the computer desktop including the cursor if desired Rectangular region capture a rectangular shape anywhere on the desktop Window capture an application window dialog box window frame etc Scrolling Window capture the contents of a window Game DirectX capture screens from DirectX games or DirectX media players e Text capture text in tab delimited format to import into spreadsheets or database applications e Object capture a specific item on the computer desktop such as a button icon toolbar e Menu capture dropdown and cascading menus from Windows programs RDE Software Development The figure 8 shows the interface of Snaglt File View Tools Help JechSmith SNAGIT EB Select a Profile then click Capture Capture 6 A region to File E A region to Clipboard
6. it was not possible to use the smart board pens One solution was to put something over the place where the pen was located thus forcing the smart board to work in mouse mode It is not a very elegant solution but at least it works Another problem solved was to delete small things since the electronic eraser is not very precise It was carried out using the electronic pen by just writing with white color on the desired parts to be erased Regarding the video due to the small videos windows used in Marratech the teacher can not look at himself herself very well From the student side the person who is talking is the one who is shown on the video screen Concerning the scanned files the files that are scanned are sent to Kodak imaging and with that program it is possible to convert the files to three different formats tif normally used but this one is not supported by Marratech gif and jpg these are also supported by Marratech but the quality is poor The advantages achieved with the Marratech NetMeeting solution are only one room is necessary so the price is half than before Another good feature is that the video and the audio work quite well with Marratech and they work in the background Student can view and opperate both programs Marratech and NetMeeting The most important discovery of the study with this second solution was that the combination of Marratech and NetMeeting works well under Guest a
7. Excellent Security l Satisfied Satisfied Number of users _ Unlimited unlimited Rating out of 5 3 5 4 5 Price Table 7 Comparison between NetMeeting and Marratech The price is for one e meeting room per year It includes an unlimited number of simultaneous users including all new updates of the software The client Marratech Pro is free of charge and can be distributed to as many as you want RDE Software Development Functionality Marratech has many important functionalities such as e There are two operating modes normal and expert which enables the user to place the various windows where the user wants e Congestion control which automatically lowers the amount of data in case of a bad network connection e Silence suppression level to avoid being heard when one is not talking e Private window to send audio and text messages to a single recipient e Lock the door and kick a user are features available in the e meeting room e More features will be mentioned below However Marratech does not have important features such as the whiteboard can not play video files or display tif format images which is the normal output format of the scanner Usability There are different windows for each application and in each of them there is a down toolbar where all of the functions are shown There are Send and Video buttons to send audio and video respectively when they are press
8. MB and we saw that in the computer which ran the recorder the video played too slowly however in the other computers connected it was possible to watch the video The audio in both computers was pretty bad it was possible to hear just a few words of all the speech In conclusion the program requires a lot from the computer So in the computers we used Pentium 2 200 Mhz PCs the program did not work quickly In Marratech CUSeeMe and WebOffice one can lock the e meeting room disallowing anyone else from joining in the session And with the latter two programs it is feasible to expel a user that is not welcome in the room In CUSeeMe you can also simply mute a participant he she has still the permission of chatting The amount of bandwidth used can be adjusted with Marratech Also the image quality can be set which can solve some communications problems In CUSeeMe there is an area called Diagnostics which shows how the system is performing Frame Per Second connection speed etc It will also display any warning messages if the system is being over taxed Our future system should have those characteristics because they help to avoid network problems Furthermore Marratech has also another feature called Congestion control that automatically lowers the amount of video and whiteboard data in use Definitely our system has to have that feature With CUSeeMe it is possible to view many different videos and place them in
9. NT 2000 XP 96 MB or higher recommended e Hard disk free space for VEE 550 MB for FAT32 or 250 MB for NTFS plus 150 MB for the NET runtime e CD ROM drive if installing from CD e Super VGA 800X600 display or higher resolution display with 256 colours or more e PC Keyboard and 2 button Mouse e IO Libraries version M 01 01 04 or higher See IO Libraries documentation for further details One of the following physical connectivity options is required for the PC to instrument connection Agilent 82357A USB GPIB Interface Agilent E5810A or E2050A B LAN GPIB gateway Agilent 82350A B or 82341C GPIB interfaces USB connection to instruments supporting the TMC protocol Standard RS 232 LAN connection to instruments supporting the VXI 11 protocol National Instruments I O hardware using NI 488 version 1 5 or higher National Instruments I O hardware using NI VISA version 3 0 or higher It is possible to download a free full capacity 30 day evaluation copy of Agient VEE Pro at reference 67 The price is 1331 and it can be purchased at the same reference than before 67 LABVIEW Information obtained at references 55 and 56 LabVIEW is the graphical development environment for creating flexible and scalable test measurement and control applications It is feasible to interface with real world signals analyze data for meaningful information and share results and applications LabVIEW is written in G or graphical program
10. Orebro University The system enables both teachers and students to interact in real time via the Internet using video audio application sharing whiteboard chat and PC remote control The following the figure 1 shows the studio in Orebro RDE Studio Projection 1 Teacher PC Projection 2 and Syst and normal Video of Virtual Electronic oidor Ed ISISMS Whiteboard Teacher Whiteboard Wireless Mic core Mouse Teacher Laptop PC Student PC System Web Camera Student Headset Figure 1 RDE Studio in rebro Our job involves the study of the current programs which the RDE system uses in order to determin which are the best features of each one and which ones could be improved Initially we started by looking at books and on the Internet to find similar programs and compare them with the current programs We also set a comparative method to compare the programs in the same way Finally we will present a table with all the software products that were tested enabling one to see the features of the different programs In addition we should study different communication formats at present IP is used browsers the possibility of working through firewalls and software interfaces The report which will be obtained after this large study should be useful for system developers Our job is considered important because trying to develop new software directly could be difficult and inefficient RDE Software Development
11. SEK Full this includes wide range of I O 450 analysis math functions advanced UI design tools and all base package functionality It cost roughly 15000 SEK 34 RDE Software Development Professional that includes premium development system tools for large projects application deployment and all full package functionality It costs roughly 26274 SEK e Developer Suite which includes bundle LabVIEW with NI SW control and test editions best value for toolkits and three new toolkits for Pro version It costs roughly 32288 SEK One of them can be purchased for the four operating systems that are shown up in the table 2 on the next Website at reference 61 In the table 2 is shown a summary of the most important information of both software interfaces HP VEE LABVIEW Caines Hewlett Packard National Instruments pany http www hp com http www ni com http www agilent com find vee Homepage http www ni com labview It is a powerful visual programming It is the graphical development language that simplifies the development environment for creating flexible and of engineering test and measurement scalable test measurement and software control applications Price SEK 12480 7480 the cheapest package Description Test measurement control interface with real world signals analyze data with functions such as frequency analysis signal generation mathematics curve fitting and inte
12. Windows XP t Windows NT __ 35 l Linux Macintosh l l Download http www simtel net product download mirr http www techsmith com d l ors php id 60013 _ ownload snagitfreetrial asp Functionality l Satisfied Excellent Usability l Satisfied Fair Satisfied Satisfied l Satisfied l Satisfied l Fair l Fair Security l Number of users _ l l l Rating out of 5 4 4 l Table 5 Comparison between CaptureNPrint and Snag It Price The price for CaptureNPrint is without banners 45 RDE Software Development Functionality CaptureNPrint has 13 different methods of capturing Snag It has more than 40 ways to capture Usability With CaptureNPrint simply press the Print Screen key and the capture is saved It is quite easy The only problem is that when a capture is done the window goes down to the toolbar Snag It is also quite easy to use but it has more features So the user has to spend some time to learn how to use them Efficiency CaptureNPrint does not require a lot from the CPU and the captures do not take so much memory The same for Snag It since it is possible to choose among many different output formats the file size of the captures can be decreased Maintainability CaptureNPrint saves the capture method and the image format Snag It maintains saves the view and the capturing method Portability Both are only available for Windows Rating Snag It is very powerful it has many f
13. and processing signals Functions such as frequency analysis signal generation mathematics curve fitting and interpolation In the figure 17 is shown the analyze data with LabVIEW LABVIEW DATA DATA SIV MNU 01001100110100 1101001100111 ULL ANALYZE data with LabVIEW Figure 17 Analyze data with LabVIEW See reference 58 The third piece of a typical measurement application is presentation which encompasses data visualization user interface design Web publishing report generation data management and software connectivity In the figure 18 is shown the present data with LabVIEW 32 RDE Software Development PC WEB xmL WORD EXCEL EN Moy A UE p FUATUIAR gt 1001101001100110 WIRELESS Jia LAPTOP PRESENT data with LabVIEW Figure 18 Present data with LabVIEW See reference 58 The system requirements for the four different available operating systems are presented in the table 1 33 Windows Development System Processor RAM Screen Resolution Operating System Disk Space Mac OS X Processor RAM Screen Resolution Operating System Disk Space Linux Processor RAM Screen Resolution Operating System Disk Space Sun Processor RAM Screen Resolution Operating System Disk Space Minimum Pentium III Celeron 600 MHz or equivalent 128 MB 800 x 600 pixels Windows 2000 NT XP Note Wi
14. based programs studies are explained specially Marratech in the section 5 6 and in the Discussion some 58 RDE Software Development good features are mentioned Even though it was done at the beginning of the project the user manual Appendix A shows how the future software interface can be For instance a future project can be to find a better way to show the image of the video camera when there are many students connected or the transmission of data is quite big and it is not possible to show all the videos at the same time A good solution can be to show a frozen image instead of the real time video and to refresh it periodically Different applications of this function can be adjusted to obtain a more appropriate fit Marratech does this by displaying a video window of the person who is currently talking A very interesting feature is Congestion control in order to check the activity of the system all the time and to decrease the quality if the system is overloaded This feature will automatically lower the amount of data in use In the end it is up to the student to determin which applications are used For instance if a student has either a poor Internet connection or a slow computer he she can use the system without some of the features like video which is more demanding in their PC and it is not essential to follow the lecture The current microphones are not comfortable enough which implies the students have to adjust
15. from the main program Windows and buttons of the toolbar Lecture The largest window in the screen see Figure 1 It can be one of the two teacher s sharing screens web site being used or another document like a Word file where the student is writing notes It will be possible to change between the different screens just by pressing a key on the keyboard for example F1 F2 F3 and so on When that key is pressed in the interface shown in Figure 1 the Lecture window would change as shown in Figure 2 64 RDE Software Development TUE we QU_2 Teachers skrivbord kan kontrolleras Y Video 3 75 fps Kontroll visa Hj lp NN E Microsoft PowerPoint Spectrum analysis Skrivskyddad E arkiv Redigera Visa Infoga Format Verktyg Bildspel F nster Hj lp jOea S6y zaes o o e nsu aan ma 0 ra exu Wt Fee OU Teacher Far gt 198kbps 14 8 fps mt uc b WAA 3 Private 8 Chat chattar me M Arkiv Redigera Visa Hj lp OU Student 2 chattar DU Student 1 testing Ericsson Radio Systems AB G vle Figure 2 Interface with another application in the Lecture window Audio When the teacher is speaking all the students wherever they are are listening If one of the students gets a question he or she has to press Question button this button will be in the vertical toolbar Once it has been done the teacher s computer gets a message asking about accepting it When the teacher accept
16. has a lot of programs which are used at the same time and it would be nice to minimize the main window Also when the size of the windows are changed they are not centred anymore On the other hand you have the option of changing all the screens as you want and resize whatever you need A good feature would be to restore the video window to a default size and also have the possibility to change everything Another interesting feature that can be included would be to incorporate speech recognition and have it display the video at the current speaker this will save some bandwidth It is also important to synchronize video and audio and reduce the delay which is not good for the system BACKGROUND COMMUNICATOR BC BC is used in RDE system for audio It works quite well for the system and it has some benefits like the Black List This list is composed of the people on line and it can be used to remove the echoes coming of them which is very important In BC you can assign different buttons like the function buttons for getting different functions like private chat or communication One can choose different audio codecs The one currently used is GSM G 10 There is also a feature called Priority Boast that prioritizes the audio packages which improves the audio quality 50 RDE Software Development CAMTASIA Camtasia is a program used for recording lectures When the recording starts it slows down the computer a lot For this r
17. help you share your ideas Figure 11 Marratech interface See reference 51 There are two modules normal shown above and expert where the various Marratech windows can be place where the user wants A headset is a must otherwise echo and background noise will disturb the audience Place the microphone at a proper distance otherwise the audience will hear the breath of the speaker Define a location for temporary files used for Instant Recordings at least 100 MB per hour if recording e meeting are planned Locking the e meeting room when all the participants have joined the e meeting it is possible to lock the door and keep others from joining the session The room has to be unlocked if a participant leaves the meeting for a while so that they can be permited back in again One can even kick disconnect a user that is not welcome in the room Send button has to be clicked to talk to the others in the e meeting Click 1t once more to stop sending audio There is also a Video button that has to be clicked for sending video in the e meeting In addition there is a feature for sending audio without having to press and depress the Audio button Private window a powerful one to one function that can be used to send audio and text messages to a single recipient Request Bandwidth the amount of bandwidth to be used in an e meeting room can be adjusted within a limited range 20 RDE Software Develop
18. if that the teacher shares a part of the lecture screen so that everybody can see exactly what the student wants to ask making it easier for everyone to understand The teacher can also look at a student s screen It could be useful when the student has done an exercise Word document a program etc or when he she wants to show the teacher the process for doing something when it is necessary to select some features in different programs because it is easier to show how to do it than to explain it by speaking or chatting After sharing an application anyone who looks at the shared program can ask for the remote control of this application by just mouse clicking twice It can be carried out in two different ways The control will be given directly A request will be sent to the sharing application user According to the response of the user the applicant will take the control or not this would be a good idea when the application has been shared to many people or when it has been shared to just to one person because it would make it easy to quickly exchange the application control In both cases the sharing application user can get the control back by just mouse clicking twice Send files This button is used for sending files In the main menu it will be possible to set all the following features of this button The IP number or group of IP numbers of the computers that will be able to receive the sent file Which file is sent
19. is no limit to how many users can be connected at the same time However if the number is high maybe not all of them can send their video at the same time Another thing that must be taken into consideration is that the software license can limit the number of users But it is possible to get one license called auditorium which has no user limit The client software is free Marratech Pro 4 0 can be downloaded at reference 38 The program can be run on Windows Mac Sun or Linux LOTUS SAMETIME Information obtained at references 41 and 42 Lotus Sametime provides real time audio and video services instant messaging web conferencing chat screen sharing capabilities like whiteboard Sametime uses streamline communications to work faster which includes three components e Server provides the platform where to connect clients including messages audio and video a shared whiteboard and shared applications e Client uses the connection e Developer toolkits make the applications flexible so every user can implement their own applications with the language they want 21 RDE Software Development The figure 12 shows the interface of Lotus Sametime 3 Sametime Meeting Room Sales Planning Microsoft Internet Explorer Meeting Edt View Toels Pemissicns Help b PO E AA Screen Sharng Wheekoad ET E PG R A ADO TXA ae P Name E B Jeremy Dies w Stephen Londerg B Steve Hopley Wb Pa Pol Jer
20. on information coming from a 36 RDE Software Development relatively small screen There are even suggestions that a videoconference should not last more than 30 minutes and there have to be some breaks during the sessions e To prepare videoconferences will take more preparation time than traditional face to face lectures e Lecturers and students quickly become familiar with video conferencing because of its similarities with classroom interaction e Still pictures and text have to be adapted properly to screen format and resolution e Light and background also have to be properly arranged The biggest problem with the audio communication between Helsinki and Kilpisj rvi was the communication between pupils in Helsinki Two way audio is very sensitive to an echo when there are two powerful audio signals made at the same time The microphones are not capable of separating noises from other voices Moving while collecting things or other activities produced extra noise The conclusion of this audio problem was that teachers had to repeat pupils answers very often make extra questions to check if everything was heard and make several attempts to activate pupils again These repetitions made the lessons of course slower and harder to follow The lesser problem with the audio problem link was the fact that the different audio sources tape wireless microphone teacher voices number of pupils need different sound levels To get the b
21. take a look at the Flash Presentation in the Website at reference 39 5 1 4 Video conferencing systems In this section we compiled information from different Websites where we get experiences about video conferencing systems ATHABASCA UNIVERSITY AU Information obtained at reference 21 All students were asked to fill out a course questionnaire The lectures were videotaped Most of the students found the quality of the video good or very good however they felt very different about the audio quality This was due to audio problems during the lectures When asked if the technology would be unobtrusive or distracting around the half of them said they had prior anxieties but at the end of the first class half of them noted that the technology was invisible The students indicated that the use of the graphics monitor and electronic blackboard were important Almost of them found the technology effective or very effective More students found the videoconferences less effective than a traditional classroom when they were at the remote site than they were at the originating site Various methods to encourage peer interaction were used Less than the half of the students did not hesitate to interact with them but even the ones who hesitated recognized the need to incorporate peer social interaction activities into the instructional material 27 RDE Software Development About asking the instructor questions most of th
22. them too much and miss some of the teacher explainations So even if it seems to not be a very important part we believe they should be changed in order to make it easier for the student However the students who are in the classrooms can listen from the speakers directly and they can have the microphones on the table and use them whenever it is necessary The students at home will usually use a headset so the problem can be avoided In the future the security of the system should taken into consideration It was not studied in this report however some aspects should be carried out such as Private session permissions firewalls NATs user names passwords encryption of data Lectures should be given in a private session to prevent other people from disturbing the lecturer Both students and teachers would have a user name and a password to log on the session Of course students would not have the same permissions that teachers have and they would not be able to modify main parameters which can destabilize the system Since the system will work through Internet it should be required that the system works through firewalls and NATs So functionalities such as sharing application sending files remote control and so on must be protected due to the significant information that they contain In the same way anti virus would be very useful to avoid infections among all the users which can result in loses of information As for the files which wi
23. to users included into it silence detection feature can override this rule Peer to peer there is no clients or servers in a BC session application searches for new users by examining all connected users and BC name users in the user list Using BC on a low bandwidth communication line modem ISDN can cause not only BC to malfunction but it can affect other networking as well since BC sends its data at a very high priority BC must be started before any other sound reproducing software BC uses by default the following ports e Data port UDP 3782 for audio data e Control port TCP 3782 for control messages BC is a peer to peer application It can work through a firewall BC must be able to initiate sockets on port TCP 3782 through it And BC needs to be able to receive inbound sockets on port TCP 3782 as well In the figure 4 can be shown the interface of Background Communicator RDE Software Development Y Background Communicator 3 3 4 File Command Options B x a que 00 de iu DER E dl Friends toggle Ctrl A amp Unknown vwww pins rd E a Reconnect Zot fii Gamers toggle D Mode Copper NORMAL y 8h Jk no activation key 244 Others no activation key x Quit Roger N Users 3 Connected 2 Pg eens Z Figure 4 Background Communicator interface See reference 5 BC requires e Computer with Pentium 200MHz or higher processor e Microsoft Windows 95 Windows 98 Windows Me W
24. 128 MB recommended e 30 MB of hard disk space The price is 299 It is possible to download a free trial for 30 days version 2 0 3 on the Website at reference 13 RDE Software Development WS_FTP SERVER Information obtained at reference 15 WS_FTP Server is a sharing file program for Windows NT 2000 XP It allows transfers of files to different destinations without adding to the workload and maximizes the rate of successful file transfers WS_FTP Servers protects the most important data of the system with a data encryption level 128 bit The software enables the distributing files on the network without any special training can be installed whenever needed it does not require expensive dedicated Hardware and it can run in the background on the PC Features of the latest version Protect final user s data and connections which run behind firewalls and NAT More control and flexibility of user s access Improvements in licenses of folders More control and protection of data Capability to restrict by means of command files the users accesses in that way they only can access to their home folders Folder Blackout while loading The level and coded name is now recorded Visualization of records from within Server manager It is possible to use the commands to add hosts Session manager is more practical and accessible The figure 7 shows an example of the WS_FTP Server interface where a port range i
25. 3 BASIC PLANNING Currently the RDE system uses several commercial software products to perform the above functions The purpose of the project is to research the possibility of developing a new software platform for the RDE system which would be more flexible cheaper easier to change software features and easier to use operator user interface The software should enable interconnection of software modules performing video audio whiteboard chat application sharing remote control e meeting recording FTP and print screen The current RDE system uses the following Windows based software to perform these functions NetMeeting Multiparty application sharing remote control chat whiteboard Ivisit Multiparty video Background Communicator Multiparty audio CaptureNPrint Print Screen Camtasia Emeeting recording WS FTP Server FTP These software products should be studied carefully and used to generate RDE system software specifications The technology used in these programs should be also compared to other programs as well as new up and coming technologies It should be noted that the above software was chosen for its stability speed of operation flexibility low cost and ease of use Currently the RDE system is based on IP communication but other communication formats should be looked at as well Browser based programs like Lotus Sametime and Marratech also should be looked at to determine the possibility of devel
26. Before receiving that file the person s will be asked if they want to accept the file being sent Whiteboard When this button is pressed the whiteboard will activate This application will be placed in the area over the Lecture window This whiteboard can be a powerful tool for teaching If the teacher has a smart board he she can use it to draw and write in a very easy and quick way Print screen Using this button will permit a user to print a specific window the entire screen or a particular region which has been specified in advance In one of the sections of the main menu it should specify what we want to print when we just press the Print Screen key on the keyboard It should be also possible for the user to look at all the print captures that have been done The images can also be saved in a specific folder so that they can be used afterwards for example to send it to somebody or to paste it in a document etc 66 RDE Software Development Audio Video mode This mode is useful to show the video images of web cams from students and classrooms and also to control the audio The screen would be viewed on a screen that is in front of the teacher behind the students who are in the same classroom as the teacher The teacher will decide how he she wants to organise the screen since there are many different ways of placing the different video images For example if there were no students present in the classroom and i
27. In addition the pedagogical aspect of the system was taken into account So both books and Websites were studied thoroughly This part is considered very important since teachers and students have to behave in a different way in this non conventional education system Some other distance education systems were also analyzed by taking advantage of their results A user manual was written to explain how the future interface could look like and work This manual contains some features and different representations that we found interesting for future system applications This job was made before being influenced by looking at commercial systems Moreover some interviews were carried out with people who somehow have been involved with the RDE system We found their experiences quite valuable Some browser based programs which put all the software applications together in the same program were also studied to determine the possibility of developing future software in that way Finally two software interfaces were studied to determin if the programming software interface can be developed in a similar manner RDE Software Development 2 BACKGROUND A real time distance education RDE system using inexpensive PC s web cams headsets writing tablets smart boards projectors printers scanners and low cost commercial software has been developed and is currently being integrated into studios at both Campus Karlskoga and the department of technology at
28. RDE Software Development Degree Work 20 points D level RDE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT Carlos Gallego Barrientos and Juan Fco Lablanca Salas Department of Technology Electronic Engineering Orebro University Orebro Spring semester 2004 Oru Te EXA037 Mag1 11 04 Examinator William D Walker Orebro University PS Department of technology UNIV SE 701 82 Orebro Sweden Orebro universitet Institutionen for teknik y 701 82 rebro O RDE Software Development ABSTRACT Nowadays distance education is becoming more and more important in the educational world It can solve some of the problems that conventional teaching has had traditionally Furthermore distance education clearly helps to continue and develop the idea of educational equality For all those reasons it is significant to study carefully the real time distance education RDE system in order to figure out what are the best features in both pedagogical and technological aspects By taking into consideration what both teachers and students think it is possible to improve the system for getting a more suitable system in the future This entire job was made in the Real Time Distance Education studio RDE Studio at the Department of Technology of Orebro University RDE Software Development CONTENTS FORWARD 3 ei een oe sii bees ea 4 1 INTRODUCTION A ose Shik dnd 5 2 BACKGROUND a R E aE E E E neha noes Re e tl 6 3 BASICPLANNING sonar 7 4 METHODS r e e a e a pne
29. The video display colour setting must be higher than 256 colours Lotus Sametime can be found in the web page at reference 43 The price for the server would be over 30 000 about 225 000 SEK and for user the cost is 48 about 360 SEK CUSEEME Information obtained at reference 52 in user manual under Support The following opinion about this program was found on a forum It s a server made for 20 25 people connected at one time I doubt many home servers would want it but it s ok for business use It s just not designed for home use The interface of CUSeeMe can be seen in the figure 13 23 RDE Software Development E CUworld Conference Microsoft Internet Explorer It s a Brave New y Powered by Quicknet magores joined the conference johnnywinnebago joined the conference fs88 joined the conference StaceyR joined the conference magores Hi all StaceyR what do yoneed us to do u johnnywinnebago Noything just chat pleasently for two seconds so can get some screenshots magores Dont really even have to pay attention as said Just need some screenshots magores How about those Seahawks magores Go 49ers magores How s the weather in Denmark today StaceyR i wish the weather woudl get better StaceyR dont you fs88 Sunny would be nice magores Same here Kinda gloomy in SF today Video Speed 3 fps 15 fps O cpu O NET 94kbs Warming High video quality with low comp
30. a student wants to take part in the lecture for instance asking the teacher a question or taking the control of one of the teacher s computers that student must ask the teacher before getting the control So the teacher will decide if that student may take the control at that moment later or never If there were a problematic student that is he she is not following the lecture in a proper way because he she is disturbing both the rest of the students and the teacher very often the teacher can decide to expel that student from that lecture After that that student will receive an email warning that if he she misbehaves again he she will not be accepted anymore in this real time distance education course The following is an explanation of both the student s and teacher s versions 63 RDE Software Development Student s version The interface of this mode is shown below Lecture window A A ADENT NES E Kontroll visa Hj lp Own camera 24 0kbps 14 9 fps Vertical toolbar Teaching camera TEG can be Combed gt Comye x envelye DUE Gr wy al Ln Jet y aby Siaj gt PE ode afer bil ET ES b mA 3 Private Utloggning He orte Arkiv Redigera Visa Hidlp s Fe 2 4 2 testing Digital radralure Prod ala her RE ARAS O E A a E SES KY fa Enki bY StnGrhes KUE Ae lodde b ay sudo xl Tek O E Chinto n sill Figure 1 Interface
31. aa a a aa eds 7 A D Internet ENE OTD a le OOE EEE E E E EE da E EE T 42 Literature St dieS A E E EOE E E E EE EEEE EE 7 43 Testing procedures ptas did is 8 4 4 Usermandalestecisotrandi ete 8 a oa AAAA WS E 8 4 6 Solutions with Matratech srs oeie ites errioan ae rrer EOE aE EEE EEEE EEEE EEEE REEE E EAEE ERE tbe 9 S RESULTS a da tai 9 5 1 Internet searchin g it iii 9 DAT Programs s iese ccs EE EE EE 9 5 1 2 Alternative programs unto olas 16 5 1 3 Browser A O 19 5 14 Video conferencing Syst MS cti that es 27 5 1 5 Software Iteraces acia AA AAA i 29 5 2 Literature Studies iaa wee 36 5 2 1 Video conferencing Systainer h E eie Neia 36 5 22 EM AA AAA A A ailetieet 39 5 3 Testing procedUreS tna sini ahi intial eines inte el E E ites 39 SA User manualin e a AAA E N ERAS 48 JNE WS A AAA A 49 5 921 Pedagogical iii AAA ibaa Leandra 49 3 3 2 Programs Currently Usedes iodo letrista ei n dorada E EE rosadas laa dad 49 5 6 Solutions with M tratech esaii neiaie e oeie na i eae aE iaa liceo iia 51 6 DISCUSSION ccoo ii a aea A A elena a iE 55 T FUTURE WORK could eden Ho Rie Ae eaten 58 8 CONCLUSIONS in i eaea al leida isis 60 REFERENCES inune eie alo ia lic oi PA dieta ok ii iii ise 61 APPENDIX A 9 0350 5 fice IR its did aaa ete ie 63 RDE Software Development FORWARD Hakan Lindegren Project Supervisor William D Walker Examinator He was the developer of RDE system at the Orebro based company Walker Interactive Communication System
32. ame time Another thing that must be taken into consideration is that the software license can limit the number of users However there is a license called auditorium that has no limit which solves the problem 54 RDE Software Development Rating Marratech has a lot of functionality including Congestion control and others to lower the data rate that is being transmitted The ease of use is high and most of the changes are saved It can be used for Windows Mac Sun and Linux It supports firewalls and NAT Finally the number of users is limited only by the available bandwidth 300 Kbyte user The main drawback is the price an e meeting server must be used which is very expensive 6 DISCUSSION PEDAGOGICAL ASPECT Both teachers and students should learn in advance the possibilities of the system so that this will reduce future time spent on technological problems For instance students should spend some time learning how to use the pen in the whiteboard because they should develop a minimum skill writing there Students should fill a questionnaire before beginning the course to let the teacher know what they expect with that distance course They should also fill another questionnaire at the end of the course telling what they think about that course that was done on the lectures between Orebro and Karlskoga That will help to improve the system We also think it is quite important that the teacher and students meet be
33. ates the extent to which the software product is easy to modify and maintain o Portability This characteristic indicates the ease of transferring the software to a different environment o Security The level of security that the program supports o Number of users Number of users that can use the program at the same time The subjective range taken to rate the previous characteristics is constituted by the following values unacceptable poor fair satisfied and excellent When we have rated the different characteristics we have based on how many good and bad aspects that program has in that particular characteristic In that way if we consider that there are the same good and bad aspects we rate that characteristic with fair e Rating Value out of five that it given to the program All the tables are clearly explained below 4 4 User manual After having made initial studies of the existing system and without going deep into the programs so as to not being influenced for commercial software a user s manual was developed The purpose with this work was to specify how a more user friendly system could look like The user s manual can be found in appendix A 4 5 Interviews Some interviews were made in order to get more information about the current system both pedagogical and technical The interviewees were Lennart Schon Thorbj rn Andersson and William Walker Those interviews saved us a lot of time since the interviewees had
34. atisfied Fair Efficiency l Unsatisfied Poor l Poor Maintainability l Satisfied l Fair Satisfied Portability l Fair l Satisfied Security l l Number of users _ l Rating out of 5 2 2 5 Table 6 Comparison between Camtasia and WebEX RDE Software Development Price It is possible to download free standalone versions of WebEX Recorder and Player Unlike the integrated WebEx Recorder which is available only in the Meeting window the standalone version of WebEx Recorder is available offline that is outside of a WebEx meeting Thus applications can be recorded or the computer s desktop at any time to create software demonstrations training and so on Functionality Camtasia has three different input sources recording screen window and region It also uses a lot of audio formats However WebEX does not have so many options maybe because we only tested a trial version Usability Camtasia has four different toolbars Annotation audio cursor and zoon amp pan Besides there are available hotkeys for Record Pause Stop and ScreenDran The program is also explained very well WebEX is not explained very well Efficiency Camtasia is very slow that is why the RDE system records on a different computer If Camtasia would be used in the student computers it would slow down the rest of the applications in computers and not work properly WebEX is also quite slow but not as much as Camtasia Maintainability There a
35. been involved with the system This enabled us to make use of the knowledge they acquired Lennart Sch n and Thorbj rn Andersson were the teachers during the lectures taught with RDE system William Walker is the master program coordinator and developer of the RDE system In RDE Software Development addition we obtained students comments from Lennart Sch n he has the questionnaires that the students filled out and therefore he brought to the conclusions 4 6 Solutions with Marratech In this section will be analyzed the two solutions found to work with Marratech it is a browser based program that is explained in the section 5 1 4 That was studied as an alternative to the five programs explained in the section 5 1 1 in order to figure out what are the benefits and downsides of each model 5 RESULTS 5 1 Internet searching This subheading is divided in different sections each one for a different topic that was searched on Internet 5 1 1 Programs In this section we discuss the six programs currently used in the RDE system and also some alternative programs to these ones NETMEETING Information obtained at reference 21 This software enables video and audio communication via the Internet The following features are currently used in the RDE system but there are more Chat e Type messages to communicate with other people during a conference e Chat with one person or a group of people across multiple computers e Wh
36. board at the same time Not supporting tif files is a problem that can be solved easily in the future Recording should be done in another computer as in the current system 57 RDE Software Development And in order to solve the video problem the solution commented in the section 5 6 should be tried So the only downside left is the price However it can be worth to pay that if the advantages achieved with Marratech NetMeeting solution are much better than the ones obtained with the current system SOFTWARE INTERFACES HP VEE is a powerful visual programming language which works linking visual objects into block diagrams LabVIEW is a graphical development environment it is written in G or graphical programming language which is composed of many nodes wired together So both can be used as a replacement for the text based languages Their best advantage is that no typing or spelling skills are required Regarding use both are similar test measurement and control applications LabVIEW is available for Windows MAC Linux and Sun however HP VEE is only available for Windows So the conclusion after this study is that both HP VEE and LabVIEW are not appropriate for the developing of the software interface of the future RDE system because they are destined for low level applications such as data acquisition from digital or analogy I O board From LabVIEW Support we obtained information about this matter They answered that it is
37. can also be pasted directly into an MS Word or PowerPoint 13 different methods of capturing Full Screen Active Window Client Area without borders caption or menu Mouse select region User defined rectangle and repeat 2 modes with and without repeat User defined circle and repeat 2 modes with and without repeat Full DOS Screen Mode Zoom Capture WebScroller Below the figure 5 shows an example of the CaptureNPrint interface Y Snap It l0 x File Edit Thumbnails Timer Image E mail Setup Help Quick Start Instruction a a 3 Thumbs Editor Catalog Save Delete E mail Copy MS Paste MS Paste Zoom Tice Deed Fe Defined Rectangle y ETEN Only y wenn brs Bitmap BMP y View 100 y Figure 5 CaptureNPrint before known as Snap It interface See reference 7 This program is available for Windows 95 98 2000 ME XP and NT 4 x And it does not require special requirements The program is free and can be downloaded from the web refers to at reference 8 It is available without banners for under 10 CAMTASIA Information obtained at reference 11 It is solution for recording editing and publishing screen video presentations It has support for a variety of video standards Record e Full motion screen recording for recording a tutorial or demonstration just clicking Record Loss quality and small file sizes TSCC Video Codec is used for getting the compression A 226 MB file can be reduced to 93 KB us
38. can select one of the following audio compression schemes G 723 captures audio at sampling rate of 8 KHz and PCM captures audio at sampling of 8 KHz 22 KHz or 44 KHz When recording audio WebEX Recorder captures approximately 15 MB of data per hour of recording In reality audio and video recording takes about 1 Gbyte per hour Without audio WebEX Recorder captures approximately 10 MB of data per hour The figure 9 Following there is shown an example of the WebEx interface RDE Software Development Player Zipsoft S ales Demo File Controls Help Figure 9 WebEx interface See reference 10 Systems Requirements PC users Windows 95 98 ME XP 2000 or NT Intel Pentium 166 MHz 32 MB RAM Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 x 5 x 6 x or Netscape Communicator 4 x JavaScript and cookies enable 56K Internet connection Mac users Mac Os X or later PowerPC Macintosh G3 64 MB RAM Virtual Memory on Netscape Communicator 4 5 through 4 7 or Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 JavaScript and cookies enable 56K Internet connection Quick Time installed For audio recording a Creative Labs Sound Blaster sound card and a microphone or phone recording adapter are required It is possible to download the program free at reference 12 In that Website it is possible to download stand alone versions of WebEX Recorder and Player Unlike the integrated WebEx Recorder which is available only in the Meeting window the standalone version o
39. ccounts Table 7 is a comparison between Marratech and NetMeeting since both are programs that support different uses they are not programs with only a specific function and therefore somehow they are similar The different characteristics are explained only for Marratech since for NetMeeting they are explained in the section 5 3 52 RDE Software Development NETMEETING MARRATECH MARRATECH Company Microsoft http www microsoft com Marratech AB Homepage http www microsoft com windows netmeeting http www marratech c om Description It helps groups of This software supports communication through Pep ple to communicate the Internet both video and audio collaborate and manage information from their computers Price SEK FREE 45123 Uses Audio t Video i Chat l Sharing l i ii Remote 5 A control Whiteboard ij Print Screen __ Recording l ii Operating systems Windows 95 4 Windows 98 i i Windows 2000 _ 7 i Windows ME _ li Windows XP S Windows NT ig ii Linux i Macintosh Sun l i Download http www microsoft com downloads details aspx http www marratech c FamilyID 26c9da7c f778 4422 a6f4 om download efb8abba021le amp DisplayLang en Functionality l Fair Satisfied Satisfied Excellent Usability l Fair Satisfied Satisfied Excellent Efficiency l Satisfied Satisfied Maintainability l Satisfied Satisfied Portability Fair
40. ce Whereas Thorbj rn handled the technical problems which could happened during the lecture During the interviews the students viewpoint was stated The following is a summary about what they said during the interviews The teacher should learn in advance what one can or can not do with the system for instance they learnt when remote control of an application is recommended and when it is not Besides some of the programs are a little tricky to use So teachers should test the programs before beginning to teach It is also quite important to meet the students in person in advance that will make the lectures more personal since the teacher will know the students better In the beginning students should fill out a questionnaire about what they expect from the course and also this will let the teacher know how many students are taking the course The teacher should force the students to participate more during the lecture For this reason the teacher should give exercises to the students to do and then give them back to the teacher Audio is the most important part of the system but a delay was noted Furthermore the student microphone is a little uncomfortable it would be a good idea to change the current microphone for another which would be closer to the mouth Since good audio is essential for holding the distance lecture the audio quality should improve As a result of the audio delay students were a little embarrassed about taking a
41. ch as experimenting with the programs reading information on Internet talking to Support personnel of the programs or people involved with the RDE system BROWSER BASED PROGRAMS You can adjust the silence suppression level with Marratech this is very important feature which prevents you from being heard when you are not talking There is also an expert mode in the same program that allows you to place all the windows wherever you want and hiding some of them With the option Image quality you can select quality from 1 to 30 If you select quality ranging 1 the quality of the image is bad and the image changes faster but there is still a delay between audio and video audio is faster than video On the other hand with quality of 30 the image does not change much at all The Push to talk option that Marratech has is quite nice because you can just hear when you press the right button of the mouse It works pretty well there are not sudden cuts in the speech when you use that option There is a Audio loop back option with Marratech that allows you to hear yourself while you are talking In our opinion it s a little bit loud because you hear at the same volume that you talk at so it becomes annoying It could be a good idea to have something like that in our system but it should be much lower 56 RDE Software Development We also made a recording with Marratech around 8 30 minutes of recording was stored in 8 7
42. ch com au ty nch com au pi Call E Ls F5 Favorites ud nch com au gp nch com au OfficeIntercom v 4 00 NCH Swift Sound Figure 10 OfficeIntercom interface See reference 29 System Requirements e Windows 95 NT4 98 2000 Me XP e Pentium 100 or above with at least 18MB RAM double for Windows 2000 XP e Sound Card e Microphone and Speakers or a headset or SpeechMike e For network connections Local Area Network TCP IP e For internet connections Internet Connection dialup or broadband It is possible to download an evaluation version for free OfficeIntercom v 3 2 and v 4 0 can be downloaded at reference 30 To use OfficeIntercom professionally a user licence register for each user of the software must be purchased The cost of the OfficeIntercom Professional User License this license is for a single user of OfficeIntercom plus Silver Support Service email only support for 1 month from the date of purchase is 20 you get a discount if you buy online and it can be done in the same Website above 5 1 3 Browser based programs These programs were studied to determinate what features future RDE software should have These programs are used to hold a videoconference with many participants and most of them include audio video chat whiteboard and so on The most important features will be explained MARRATECH Information obtained at reference 51 The first time it is run some options have
43. ction of built in devices Iterator junction and conditional devices affect program control flow Other devices manipulate data or perform side effects some devices do both Another set of devices are available for applied mathematics controlling instruments displaying engineering graphs building user interfaces data management and performing I O Agilent VEE Pro formally HP VEE interfaces with office tools Microsoft Word for reports Excel for spreadsheets Outlook for paging and e mail and Access for database operations It integrates the NET Framework and ActiveX With the ActiveX Automation Sever other programs can call VEE Pro user functions It supports all popular programming languages including Visual Basic C C Visual C all NET compliant languages and National Instruments LabVIEW A wide variety of graphics formats are supported including JPEG BMP GIF WMF and PNG Besides VEE Pro can be monitored and diagnosed remotely via the web or network 142 Figure 15 A simple HP VEE program See reference 65 A b 2 The minimum system requirements for Agilent VEE 7 0 on Windows are as follows e Windows 98 SE or ME Windows NT 4 0 SP6a Windows 2000 SP4 or Windows XP SP1 operating system e Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 01 or later is required e Pentium 133 MHz processor 266 MHz Pentium II or higher recommended 30 RDE Software Development e 32 MB RAM with Windows 98 64 MB with Windows
44. ddress has to be entered Only one person has to enter the email address whereas the another one can just add it to favourites On the other hand it has the disadvantage that you can not select a mode to talk continuously instead the other person must do it But the main disadvantage is that it is not an audio multiparty program like BC so you can only talk to one person at the same time Usability With BC it is necessary to enter the IP number for creating a new user and it can be a little tricky to make it work properly when we experimented with BC we spent a lot more time than with others programs On the other hand it is possible to make a black list or change between the two different talking modes quite easy and fast With OfficeIntercom the talker must press the F5 button unless the other users select Remote listen When that happens you will be heard until you press F5 or the other users stop using Remote listen Using the Favourite List is easier than entering an IP number besides only one person has to enter the email address as it was mentioned above The lack of a mode for talking continuously is another drawback Efficiency BC does not consume a lot of resources since it opperates in a background mode OfficeIntercom uses about 4 5 Meg of memory while it is running This should not be a problem for a computer which has 64 MB or over Maintainability BC saves the different groups which were created suc
45. different positions the same with chat window You can decide which participants you want to look at in a conference by just dragging and dropping their names Lotus Notes Sametime has developed toolkits which enables users to personalize their software using the language they want to use in the program That is really important because it makes it possible to develope your own personal interface With Lotus Notes it is possible to access offline if there is nobody connected Marratech has the option Direct calls that permits person to person calls without connecting to a Marratech server But it does not support NAT networks so that is a problem Since the Marratech e meeting portal offers much better support for firewalls and NAT Lotus Notes has all the data encrypted That is a very important point for security So the system should take this into consideration WebOffice has a Voting function which is really useful because someone can send a question with or without possible answers and the program calculates statistics and makes graphs as desired That is good for interactive lectures The system should be able to work with different operative systems such as Windows Mac Sun or Linux And it should also be able to let as many people as possible to connect at the same time For instance WebOffice lets 100 people to connect at the same time and up to 10000 people using a server SOLUTIONS WITH MARRATECH First of all we wil
46. e window In that whiteboard PowerPoint files can be brought up moreover there is a feature in Marratech Toggles lead page changes which lets one load only the slides to be presented This computer connects to the Blue room The Audio Video computer also connects to the same room which manages the chat and the video windows participants video and teacher s video The Teacher2 computer connects to the Green room and it runs the second whiteboard which serves to capture the written notes for the lecture Students have to connect to both rooms For that reason they have to select new room option in Marratech instead of leaving the first room In that way the student can watch one whiteboard or the other one just by changing the room That was done because with only one computer it is not feasible to work with PowerPoint presentations and whiteboard at the same time and both are really important for the teacher during a lecture This is a problem with Marratech where there is just a whiteboard and all the files PowerPoint Word etc are brought there It is necessary to delete the current file before using the next one Netmeeting does not have that problem it has a whiteboard and applications on the PC can be shared to all the PC s connected Another problem found with Marratech is that the only type of files that can be brought on the whiteboard are copy and pasted images PowerPoint and Word but it does not support the
47. e audio can be modified You can also watch your own video camera see each other or everybody in a conversation at the same time as it is shown in the figure 14 below 25 RDE Software Development kaa Y CbOfFice Meeting Manager budget FY03 www webotfice broedbend com jande rson broadband com xj Strategic Services Advertising Media ick to select Page From Whatebostd 1 1 Direct Mail BAF 11 Marcom Other PR Interactive zj Password OFF Max Participants 10 Figure 14 WebOffice interface See reference 39 The connection is done using a server so the security is very important There are different options to make the connection safer You can lock the meeting for the people are allowed with an invitation The information can be sent encrypted for more security You can introduce a password for the meeting Sharing applications is a flexible feature enabling one to choose the applications on in that moment as well as the person you want to see the application It works with a white board with some functions like pointers text box etc WebOffice also has a Voting function One person in a meeting can ask a question put some answers and the rest of the people select one of the answers Then the program calculates the statistics about the answers and can show the results Requirements e Standard Intel Pentium II 600 or higher PC e 128 MB RAM Operating systems e W
48. e students did not hesitate and the others did not participate because of audio problems About half of the students said that they did not participate as much they do as in classroom lectures Around three fourths of the class stated they would recommend a videoconference course to others or take other themselves The main thing they liked about video conferences was to interact virtually with peers and explore a new technology In terms of dislikes they focused on technical problems such as set up time audio problems and the synchronization of audio and video In addition three hours of videoconference seemed to be too long Although travel stress is reduced video conferencing may create new stresses for the instructor due to the preparation and rehearsal time needed For the instructor there is a natural tendency to either focus on the originating site or over compensate by focusing constantly on the remote site As in teleconferencing the instructor must speak into a microphone that causes some audio interference since there is a natural tendency to project to the group at the remote site Also extra attention must be paid to acoustics in both sites Video conferencing is useful in courses where group interaction and dynamic visual presentations are important elements of the teaching and the instructor must design new instructional techniques compatible with the technology TASMANIAN DEPARTAMENT OF EDUCATION Information obtained at ref
49. early visible so it is better to use the mouse itself for doing this action The program buttons sometimes become hidden To get them back one can minimize the window and maximize it again For getting the connection started you have to type in IP addresses which is not easy It would be better to have a list with all the IP addresses or it would be better to use names The number of IP addresses that can be connected is limited In the RDE system this number is 16 but it can be increased by having the students connect to different teaching computer IP addresses On the other hand some of the features that work well for the RDE system are the sending of files and the White Board updates quickly which is useful for smooth written connections In addition there are some other ideas that should be included in the RDE system One of them is to accept calls automatically in order to get the users connected Another one would be as incorporated in MSN Messenger to enter a stand by status when the user is not working IVISIT Ivisit is the program used for video in RDE system Because of the limited bandwidth the video is delayed in the transmission and it also affects the resolution of the video as well The program can support multiple video windows but it seems to be limited to about ten or more video windows at the same time In Ivisit when you minimize the main window the video screen is also hidden This is a problem because the RDE system
50. eason it is better to use another computer that runs this application Another problem that it has is how to change between the two teacher screens When the teacher is working in one of them and he she wants to change the screen viewed on the recording computer has to be changed by hand and this is troublesome to do during the lecture 5 6 Solutions with Marratech Two versions of Marratech were tried Pro 3 4 whose specifications are Pentium I at 300 MHz and Pro 4 0 whose specification is Pentium II In the first tests version 3 4 seemed to crash in such a way that when the program crashed on the student computer it also made the teacher s computer crash which is intolerable That is why the next version was also tried which includes a new functionality application sharing a very important feature for the RDE system In addition it is more flexible since it allows resizing the windows nevertheless it does not let you place them wherever it is desired The application sharing feature was very slow and did not seem to work very well Finally it was decided to use version 3 4 because that version seemed to work better on student computers The first solution was to connect to two different rooms a room is a server solution that allows the creation of a meeting in this solution green and blue rooms were chosen The Teacher computer sets up the first whiteboard In the expert mode of Marratech where it is possible to bring up only on
51. ed In addition there is a feature for sending audio without having to press and depress the Audio button Furthermore the first time that Marratech is run some settings must be filled in That helps since at the beginning is not necessary to look for the different settings on the menu Efficiency There are many features in order to reduce the amount of data and in that way to reduce the load when the computer is not powerful enough or when there is a bad network connection These features are Request Bandwidth Image quality Control congestion Limit capture frame rate and Resizable window they are explained in the section 5 1 4 On the other hand using the recorder slows down the computer a lot and that makes the other applications not work properly Maintainability With the expert mode it is possible to resize all the windows and place them wherever the user wants All these changes are saved for the next time the window is opened or the program is run Also all the features that can be selected in the Options are also saved Portability Marratech is available for Windows Mac Sun and Linux Security Marratech e meeting portal offers support for firewalls and NAT Number of users The number of users that can be connected at the same time is limited by the bandwidth available about 300 Kbyte per user However if the number is quite high maybe not all of them can send video at the s
52. emy Diss icinedthe mosting m O e 02 Paints 01024 A Figure 12 Lotus Sametime interface See reference 54 Some features and benefits e Ubiquity Enables one to know the status of the connection and the participants e Authentication and access control Users are authenticated when they accessed One can also block the meeting and set a password to protect the conversation e Security and privacy Data is encrypted to protect the meeting Chats can be saved in a text file The program also includes firewalls e Scalability All the sessions can be shared with a hundred people It also has a tool to control traffic balancing e Server management One can control the users in a connection to create new ones manage security and access Lotus Sametime 3 1 server requirements Browsers for Microsoft Windows e Microsoft Internet Explorer for Microsoft Windows Version 5 5 with MS JVM 1 1 IE 6 0 with MS JVM 1 1 or Sun JVM 1 4 1 e Netscape Communicator for Microsoft Windows Version 7 02 with Sun JVM 1 4 1 Browsers for UNIX e Netscape Communicator for IBM pSeries AIX Version 7 02 with IBM JVM 1 4 22 RDE Software Development Netscape Communicator for Sun Solaris Version 7 02 with Sun JVM 1 4 1 Netscape Communicator for Red Hat Linux Version 7 02 with Sun JVM 1 4 1 Client Operating Systems IBM pSeries AIX Versions 5 1 and 5 2 IBM iSeries OS 400 5722SS1 Version 5 Release 1 or higher Microsoft Wi
53. er hand the main disadvantages are it is not possible to enter IP names it does not have a list with all the people the user usually meets there are some troubles with the pointer and the buttons of the whiteboard and it can only remote the control one computer at a time Regarding Ivisit first of all we can see the price is pretty expensive It does not have many features since it is not possible to resize the windows and the main window can not be closed Besides it does not include a very important feature like Speech level detection Finally the maintainability is poor Some advantages are that it is available for Macintosh and the latest version will work with many NAT proxy Firewall 44 The table 5 shows a comparison between CaptureNPrint and Snag It RDE Software Development CAPTURENPRINT SNAG IT company Xoanan Industries ia i http www techsmith com http www xoanan com Homepage http www xoanan com windowsce Snaplt ht a conp eS roducts snagit default asp It captures screen images save anything that is shown on the screen text video and print output Then it is possible to print customize or send Price SEK l 76 l 303 Uses l l Audio video Chat l l Sharing l l Remote control l l Whiteboard l l Print Screen k l j Recording Operating systems l l Windows 95 sd l a Windows 98 dl e Windows 2000 _ id Windows ME __ l
54. erence 22 Reasons for using video conferencing 1 Seeing is to believe Callers see each other on a screen and talk Participants can also share different documents and they can work collaboratively 2 Visuals are appealing The property of seeing the other party is really important that is why telephone sometimes is not enough Psychologically people like to interact on a more personal level Travel distances and missing study opportunities can be solved with videoconferences 3 Trends Around the world schools colleges and libraries are using videoconferencing technology to Provide equitable access to resources for at risk or special needs students Share scarce resources especially for scattered or rural populations Deliver information on rapidly changing topics Provide a virtual experience when the real experience is not feasible Facilitate collaboration information sharing problem solving and decision making within a learning environment based on shared discussion expertise and problem solving INSTITUTE OF GENERAL SECONDARY EDUCATION RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF EDUCATION Information obtained at reference 23 Distance school education is necessary for e Those children who wish to learn some new course that is not on the school curriculum take a course in foreign language they do not study at school etc e Those who wish to enhance their knowledge in some subject to prepare for entrance examinations
55. erson is a little uncomfortable 41 RDE Software Development The table 4 shows a comparison between NetMeeting and Ivisit INEM visi O Company Homepage Description Price SEK Uses Microsoft http www microsoft com http www microsoft com windows netmeeting This software supports communication through the Internet both video and audio FREE Ivisit http www ivisit com A program that integrates audio video chat and messaging 6003 Audio Video Chat Sharing X Remote control Whiteboard Print Screen Recording Operating systems Windows 95 Windows 98 Windows 2000 Windows ME Windows XP Windows NT X X X Linux Macintosh Download http www microsoft com downloads details aspx FamilyID 26c9da7c f778 4422 a6f4 http www ivisit info l efb8abba021e amp DisplayLang en Functionality Fair Satisfied Poor Usability Fair Satisfied Poor Fair Efficiency l Satisfied Fair Maintainability l Satisfied Poor Portability Fair Satisfied Security l Satisfied Satisfied Number of users _ Unlimited 10 Rating out of 5 3 5 2 Table 4 Comparison between NetMeeting and IVisit 42 RDE Software Development Price The NetMeeting software program is free from Microsoft and comes with most Windows operating systems In Windows 2000 is already installed T
56. est possible quality for the audio there should be a sound check before every lesson In practice this was very difficult to do because of the timetables The problems with the audio link were not similar in the different subjects The language subjects suffered the most from missing lip synchronization between the audio and video History as a subject requiring a lot of communication and also making conclusions suffered most from the general problems with the audio communication Opinions about the quality of the video picture ranged from very poor to satisfactory Pupils seemed to be more critical than teachers about the quality are However all participants thought that the video link is very important For the teachers the video gives the opportunity to control and evaluate the pupils work and their alertness Video is also very useful way to guarantee fluent classroom discussion because it is possible to take turns by raising hands For pupils it gives a personal image and makes the communication more interesting The local interaction between the teacher and the pupils in Helsinki was quite intensive The pupils were in direct face to face interaction with the teacher and so pupil support was possible The mediated interaction between the teacher and the remote pupils in Kilpisj rvi was intense but to a request for answers and guiding principles Some differences concerning the amount of attention the teachers paid to Kilpisj rvi were obser
57. f WebEx Recorder is available offline that is outside of a WebEx meeting Thus applications or the computer s desktop can be recorded at any time to create software demonstrations training and so on OFFICEINTERCOM Information obtained at reference 29 This program is studied as an alternative to Background Communicator OfficeIntercom enables one to use the computer to speak to others over Internet or a local computer network It works as a virtual intercom To talk to anyone else who has installed OfficeIntercom anywhere in the world just hold down a key on the keyboard Speak into the computer s microphone and the voice will be heard through the other computer s speakers System wide hot keys can be assigned or used hardwired buttons or a SpeechMike handset to connect directly without opening OfficeIntercom For security or privacy OfficeIntercom can also encrypt the voice with private key strong encryption OfficeIntercom is designed to be fast and easy to use It can be much more efficient communication than dialing telephone calls or typing and sending email OfficeIntercom uses about 4 5 Mega of memory while it is running This should not be a problem for a computer which has 64 MB or over In our particular case the student computers have 128 MB so it is enough for using the program The figure 10 shows the OfficeIntercom interface RDE Software Development Officelntercom Intercom Help Logged on as nch n
58. feasible to do something like what is required in the RDE system but it would be very difficult and would operate very slow There is a toolkit for LabVIEW that records images in a compressed format which mixes both video and audio An evaluation version can be found at reference 74 IVision AudioPlus 7 FUTURE WORK In the case that the RDE system will continue with the six currently used programs it should look for an alternative for Ivisit due to it s poor rating The others programs are acceptable However the problem using so many programs is that the student must run all of them at the beginning of the lecture In addition the student must take care of the order that the programs are turned on the order must be Background Ivisit and NetMeeting So that involves spending some time waiting untill all the programs are running Set up time The Marratech NetMeeting solution solves that problem partly because the number of programs is reduced only to two Even though the price for an e meeting room is high it deserves recognition since that combination works quite well and it is easier for the students to operate It should be noted that during this project we tested version Pro 4 0 but now the version Pro 4 1 is out So a new task for the future should be to try the next version because it is said that the application sharing which was something that did not work very well in the previous version and it is an important part in RDE is f
59. fore beginning the course That will inform the teacher better on how to create a more personalized teaching style It is clear that this kind of video conferencing system is more suitable for adult education than for a school environment Students must maintain a low noise level during the lectures and they should not be embarrassed about taking part in the lectures Concerning how the technology might distract students we believe after a few sessions they will not care so much about it Teachers should not pay too much attention to the equipment and technical problems otherwise students may get bored In addition teachers should try to pay attention to both originating and remote sites equally since teachers tend to pay more attention to one of them That can cause the other group get frustrated Teachers must design new instructional techniques compatible with the technology It is very important to incorporate peer social interaction activities into the instructional material This can solve the problem of students not participating as much as they usually do in classroom lectures The main advantages of this kind of education are e Interaction with peers Explore a new technology Support talented people or special needs students Share scarce resources especially for scattered or rural populations Deliver information on rapidly changing topics Provide a virtual experience when the real one is not feasible Facilitate collaboration informatio
60. h as black list and the rest of the groups In addition the activation key is also saved OfficeIntercom saves the favourites list and the features you have with every user Portability Both programs are available only for Windows Security BC is a peer to peer application thus to be able to work through the firewall BC must be able to initiate sockets on port TCP 3782 through it And BC needs to be able to receive inbound sockets on port TCP 3782 as well With OfficeIntercom it is possible to encrypt the conversation with a password so both talkers have to write the same password in order to maintain a conversation Rating BC has a few good features such as 2 modes to talk black list groups of 100 users it works in a background mode that is why the efficiency is high and the different created groups and the activation key are saved On the other hand the usability is not very good enter IP numbers and a little tricky to use at the beginning and it does not have any kind of encryption The positive characteristics of OfficeIntercom are the user has to enter the email address of the person who he she wants to talk with instead of the IP number there is a favourites list its efficiency is acceptable since it just takes about 4 5 Meg of the memory and the conversation can be encrypted However it is not a multiparty program That means that it is not appropriate for the RDE system Besides the way to communicate with the other p
61. he length of a presentation should not exceed 10 minutes before a dialogue is established One of the goals in the project was to explore the potentials in video conferencing for what it was called students talk back active student participation and agenda setting activities In general the evaluation from the students was positive Primarily problems are referred to the state of the art of the technology and the software Problems related to the didactics of video conferencing were solved during the course as an integrated part of our common learning process It should be stated that the students evaluated video conferencing as an acceptable learning environment against the alternative of cost and time consuming travel STOCKHOLM INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH Information obtained at reference 25 The experiences from the course could be summarised in following points The importance of e Describing the target group e Presenting the course in the Study Guide e Balancing the relationship between educational activities independent of space and time and activities which demand scheduled meetings of providing conditions for the participants impact on all phases of the course e Developing approaches in order to promote the pedagogical communication e Not using videoconferences for lectures just only for exchange of ideas and experiences between the participants 5 1 5 Software interfaces The two soft
62. he price of Ivisit is for an education bundle which includes a server and 20 system users The price is per year It is possible to buy different packages with more systems users but the price increases Functionality NetMeeting has some good features such as the user can write very fast in the whiteboard and the others can see everything send files in the background share programs in a frame switch the shared programs using the shared program taskbar and receive a request before allowing others to work in a program Nevertheless it has also some bad qualities such as the user can remote control only to one computer at a time the pointer of the whiteboard can not be seen very well the control buttons can become hidden and there does not exist the possibility of writing IP names instead of IP numbers With Ivisit you can not resize the windows as you want there are only three different sizes and you can not close the main window unless all the other window are closed too Usability NetMeeting has different icons for application sharing chat and whiteboard respectively Within the application sharing option it is possible to set the remote control features So it is quite easy for using However it is necessary to write the IP number in order to call somebody It would be easier to have a list with all the IP numbers or even better to call telephone numbers or names About Ivisit you must write the IP number of the person you want to
63. hers did not control them as much because they had to concentrate on the remote classroom at the same time Some regarded this is a good thing because they felt as if they were getting off more easily Others regarded this more as unpleasant feeling themselves ignored and rejected by the teacher The 37 RDE Software Development pupils thought that most of their teachers took both instructional groups into account in the same way but that some teachers tended to ignore either the local or the remote group The majority of the pupils felt that they had learned better during conventional lessons than during distance lessons This is an interesting point of view because no differences were noticed in their marks compared to their earlier mark during the first of the project The pupils comprehended that the subjects regarded as the easiest were best suited for classroom focused distance education As a whole the pupils were not very enthusiastic about the distance lessons The main reason for dissatisfaction was that the tempo was considered all too slow during the lessons The pupils got bored which reduced the rate of their commitment and concentration on the instruction The pupils also complained about the technical problems during the lessons especially the difficulties of hearing the answers of the remote pupils Problems in video links were also marked although such disconnections did not occur particularly often Despite all the c
64. hich participants are seen in a conference Just drag and drop the names from the Attendee List into the video frames If the frame is empty the new video is displayed If video is already displayed in the frame the new video replaces it Muting and Disconnecting Participants moderator only the conference creator can mute and disconnect other participants in the meeting Participants can still use the chat option to ask questions or raise issues To mute or disconnect a particular participant right click on that participant in the Attendee List or in the video frame Choose Mute or Disconnect Locking down a Conference moderator only a conference can be closed or locked down to prevent stragglers or unwanted participants At any point after calling the meeting to order select Lock Down from the Moderate menu Your conference is immediately closed to new participants To use CUworld one needs CUseeMe v6 3 and the CUpals instant messaging client CUseeMe v6 3 is only available for Microsoft Windows operating systems 24 RDE Software Development Requirements Operating System e Windows 98 Second Edition e Windows Professional 2000 e Windows XP Professional Edition e Windows XP Home Edition With Service Pack 4 Internet Browser e Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 6 0 and above with Cookies enabled CPU e Pentium II 450 MHz or higher RAM e 128M or higher Internet Connectivity e 56Kbps dial up modem or highe
65. indows 95 98 SE NT 2000 ME XP e Mac e Linux Browsers e IE 4 0 and higher Windows e IE 5 2 and higher Mac e Netscape 7 0 and higher Windows e Netscape 7 1 and higher Mac amp Linux Client hardware requirements e Standard Intel Pentium III 600 or higher Windows PC e 128 MB RAM and higher 26 RDE Software Development Client network requirements e 128k and higher Server hardware requirements 5 Licenses e Pentium III 700 MHz 500 MB RAM and 10 GB hard disk with 512 Kbps connection 25 Licenses e Dual Pentium III 500 MHz 1 GB RAM and 40 GB hard disk with 1 0 Mbps connection 100 Licenses Dual Pentium 4 1 2 GHz 1 GB RAM and 60 GB hard disk with RAID 0 1 0 Mbps or higher connection 250 Licenses Dual Pentium 4 2 x GHz 2 GB of RAM and 100 GB hard disk with RAID 1 5 Mbps connection 500 or more e Dual Pentium 4 with highest speed 2 GB of RAM minimum and 20 GB install disk and 100 GB data disk with the data disk RAID 5 Striped with 1 5 Mbps or higher connection Server software requirements e Windows 2000 Server Service Pack 3 Server network requirements e LAN connectivity 100 Mbps e WAN connectivity T 1 1 536 Mbps e Firewall connectivity Port 80 or as specified by administrator HTTP SOCKS 4 SOCKS 5 Requirements for video e Polycom ViaVideo II version 5 0 amp 5 1 e Polycom ViewStation Family EX FX version 5 1 VSX 7000 version 5 0 You can get a free 14 day trial version at reference 76 and also
66. indows NT 4 0 Windows 2000 or later e TCP IP connection e If the connection is via modem 14400 bps or better modem is required To work properly on the RDE system BC may require some additional system components Depending on the operating system type these components are e Windows Me contains all required components e Windows 98 MS NetMeeting may be installed from Windows package e Windows 95 Windows Socket 2 update Internet explored 4 0 or later DirectX 5 or later MS NetMeeting e Windows 2000 contains all required components e Windows NT 4 0 Service Pack 5 or later MS NetMeeting Recommended e Sound card audio driver capable of simultaneous record and playback full duplex e Standard audio codecs should be installed from Windows package if Windows 95 98 Me is used e Computer with Pentium II Celeron processor e Ifthe connection is via modem 33600 or 56K modem is highly recommended e Multimedia Head Set It is possible to download Background communicator version 3 2 with shareware license See reference 6 but all the Websites that were found do not work properly so it was not possible to download it The price is 15 CAPTURENPRINT Information obtained at reference 7 It is a screen capturing program which can be used to save anything that is shown on the computer screen Then it is possible to print customize or send by email or fax in an easy way RDE Software Development Captured images
67. ineering A practitioner s approach ed 1997 A Practical Approach to Software Quality ed 2002 RDE Software Development 4 3 Testing procedures The following tests contain the analysis we have made of the currently used programs as well as alternative programs based on the literature studies of testing and software quality books The result of this analysis is specified on the tables in the part 5 3 On these tables both the currently used programs and the alternative programs are compared The characteristics used on these tables are the following Company Name of the enterprise owner of the program and its Website Home page Main page of the program Description Small description of each program Price Price of the program Uses Uses of the program such as audio video chat sharing remote control whiteboard print screen and recording Operating systems Software platforms which the programs require e Download Website where the program can be downloaded e Characteristics we will define them according to the rule ISO 9126 about Quality o Functionality This characteristic indicates the extent to which the required functions are available in the software o Usability This indicates the usability of the software and indicates the extent to which the users of the software judge it to be easy to use o Efficiency This characteristic indicates the efficiency of the software o Maintainability This characteristic indic
68. ing programs is one of the most difficult steps in developing an application There are a lot of authors who write their own characteristics for analyzing a program For example the McCall s Quality Factors Roger Pressman 1997 are Product operation e Correctness e Reliability e Efficiency e Integrity e Usability Product revision e Maintainability e Flexibility e Testability Product transition e Portability e Reusability e Interoperability The purpose of these quality factors is to determine the requirements that the program needs These requirements have to be clearly specified in order to develop the application There are two different categories of requirements functional and non functional requirements 5 3 Testing procedures In the following four tables we compare both currently used RDE system programs and alternative ones The table 3 shows a comparison between BC and OfficeIntercom 39 RDE Software Development BACKGROUND COMUNICATOR OFFICEINTERCOM BC Company Freehosting NCH http www nch com http bcom freehosting net http www nch com au oi A program to speak to others over the internet or your local office computer Voice chat program designed to work in a Description background mode network Price SEK 113 150 Uses Audio l i Video Chat l 7 Sharing Remote control Whiteboard Print Screen Recording Operating
69. ing the TSCC video codec 13 RDE Software Development e Audio and video recording 1Gbyte Hr using TSCC codec Record narration e Screen highlights Enhance e It is possible to edit cut and join videos with multiple editing options e Interactive flash and spots e Personalized video since there is the possibility of adding previously digitized video files from the video camera e Zoom n Pan high quality recording of a full screen application can be delivered on a laptop or handheld device e Callout and text boxes Publish e Flash and streaming video file outputs AVI Macromedia Flash Macromedia Flash Video Windows media QuickTime RealMedia Executable Animated Customized CD Menus Files as videos PowerPoint presentations Word documents PDF Web pages Text files executables etc e Web Menus to find or play back Flash videos e Software demos and tutorials can be pre recorded and be embedded into presentations e Components for Flash MX Some of the possible uses of Camtasia Studio can be distance learning documentation conferencing and so on The figure 6 shows the interface of Camtasia W3 Camtasia MenuMaker A AE file Edt Yew ook Heb lee BwWAN 0 TechSmith CAMTASIA MenuMaker Figure 6 Camtasia interface See reference 75 Camtasia Studio 1 1 for Windows 98 ME NT Camtasia Studio 2 requirements e Microsoft Windows 2000 or XP e 500 MHz 1GHz recommended e 64 MB RAM
70. isper mode to send private messages with another person Program sharing e View shared programs in a frame which makes it easy to distinguish between shared and local applications on your desktop e Minimize the shared program frame and do other work if it is not necessary to work in the current conference program e Switch between shared programs using the shared program taskbar e Choose to allow one person to work in the shared program e Allow or prevent others from working in a program using the Sharing dialog box Remote Desktop Sharing RDS e Enables one to operate a computer from another different computer e Multiparty e Use a secure connection and a password to access the remote desktop files and programs e Protect your computer while using RDS with a password protected screensaver The Audio and Video parts in NetMeeting are not used in the RDE system because they only work for two parties whereas multiparty is required The number of NetMeeting users can be set to a maximum number or set as unlimited full access The figure 2 shows the NetMeeting interface RDE Software Development PY MetMecting Cal View Tools Help Ls Mary Brown G Jim White a fel la fal In a call EES Figure 2 NetMeeting interface See reference 21 System requirements e 90 MHz Pentium 16 MB RAM for Windows 95 98 ME 2000 XP NT 24 MB RAM for Windows NT 4 0 28800 BPS or faster modem 4 MB of free hard disk space a
71. ixed The Marratech client program Pro 4 1 is available at the same Website reference 38 A further step is to put all the applications together in such a way that just clicking an icon would start all the applications and set them up It would be easier and faster for the student Also the student currently has to place the different windows in a suitable way It consumes time which should be avoided So the solution explained above should also place all the windows properly talking into account the students should be able to change the position of the windows in the way they want One possible student screen is shown in the User manual Appendix A In the previous paragraph we studied two Software Interfaces HP VEE and LabVIEW in order to determin if it is possible to use them for developing this future software interface The conclusion about this matter is that they are not appropriate for this job So another task for the future is to study higher programming languages in order to find out which ones are suitable for programming the future software interface When programming the new software interface it is important to take into consideration all the good features that have been determined during this study of the currently used programs and the alternative ones The important aspects of these programs can be easily seen in the different tables in section 5 3 and the browser based programs in section 5 1 4 where the different browser
72. l review the main advantages and disadvantages of Marratech The program has an expert mode which enable the various windows to be brought up individually Congestion control which is also very important is supported in Marratech The ease of use is quite high and there are many features to lower the amount of data so a really powerful computer is required All these advantages make the system easier to use for the student Moreover Marratech is available for four different Operative Systems and it works under firewalls and NAT On the other hand the drawbacks are it is not possible to play video files on the whiteboard a Power Point presentation and the whiteboard can not be run at the same time it does not support tif files and the Recording part slows down the computer a lot In addition the application sharing feature does not work very well The biggest disadvantage is the price because one room costs around 45000 SEK Regarding the solution tried with Marratech and NetMeeting it seems to be a quite acceptable solution The audio and video work quite well with Marratech and they work in the background students can control both programs it is possible to run the whiteboard and a Power Point presentation at the same time in addition to all the good characteristics which were commented above And it can be opperated under Guest accounts It is also possible for teachers not to use Power Point presentations and the white
73. ll be stored on the FTP server they should be also protected by user names and passwords Furthermore data encryption could be a good tool not only for security but for faster file transfer So we think it is a feature of the system that should be studied carefully One of the important goals is to develop the capability of working on many operating systems so that each user can use the operative system on their computer The RDE system should be able to run on many computer platforms The problem with the recording of the various teacher boards must be solved One possible solution could be to develop a software program using the page pushing feature used in Marratech which records only the board which the teacher is working with at that moment It would also be a good idea to divide the recording session in different pieces in such a way that the student who wants to download a part of the lecture does not have to download the entire lecture He She could download only the part that he she is interested in The system should have an auto updated process that means that when the system has an improvement the students would receive a message asking about updating the program automatically that message would be received the first time the student logs in the system Concerning the pedagogical part this report has presented some important ideas on how to teach in this kind of non conventional education system So in the future the teachers sho
74. ment Quality a lower image quality value indicates more compression more blackness and lower quality image A lower image quality will also give higher frame rate A high image quality makes the image update slower than with a lower image quality Marratech uses a feature called Congestion Control that automatically lowers the amount of video and whiteboard data used during a bad network connection Video follows video is a useful meeting feature that enables the Video window to automatically change to the current speaker The Whiteboard it can import images text and MS Word and PowerPoint documents It can also share present all other windows on your computer for others to view Direct Calls person to person calls can be made without connecting to a Marratech e meeting portal server The Direct call functionality does not support NAT networks The Marratech e meeting portal offers much better support for firewalls and NAT and is recommended extranet usage Indexing recording recordings may be indexed allowing you and others to quickly reach the desired section of the recording Some tips to avoid network problems 1 Turn off the video 2 Lower the video bandwidth speed 3 Decrease the video image quality to gain a slightly better refresh rate even through the maximum video bandwidth was just lowered 4 Lower the audio quality switch to GSM audio encoding which has a lower bandwidth requirement There
75. ming language which is composed of many nodes wired together Also unlike the other programming languages Lab VIEW has continuous Auto compiling that means when an error is committed it tells the programmer immediately LabVIEW is used as a replacement for the text based languages so it possible to see literally what it is being done quickly insert a missing piece of code and study how the data is travelling This is the best advantage of this type of language it is not required typing or spelling skills Most measurement applications can be divided into three areas interfacing with or acquiring real world data analyzing that data to extract meaningful information and presenting the information to an end user LabVIEW delivers a graphical development environment for these three areas LabVIEW is an open environment designed to make interfacing with any measurement hardware simple With interactive assistants code generation and connectivity to thousands of devices LabVIEW makes gathering data In the figure 16 is shown the acquire data with LabVIEW 31 RDE Software Development UNIT UNDER TEST a CTL PXI SYSTEM Wel el el a0 g ay 0011001101001100 00 LLL Lr Lr u ACQUIRE data with LabVIEW Figure 16 Acquire data with LabVIEW See reference 58 LabVIEW has more than 400 built in functions designed specifically for extracting useful information from any set of required data and for analyzing measurements
76. moreinfo macosx 19771 amp page 4 10 2 2004 5 http bcom freehosting net 11 2 2004 6 http bcom freehosting net download html 11 2 2004 7 http www geocities com blue_dragon_1964 main html 12 2 2004 8 http www simtel net product download mirrors php id 60013 12 2 2004 9 http www cooltoolawards com software multimedia camtasia htm 13 2 2004 10 http www realnetworks com products camtasia 13 2 2004 11 http www techsmith com 16 2 2004 12 http www wsipc org Information siteinfo htm 16 02 2004 13 http www techsmith com download studiodefault asp lid DownloadCamtasiaStudio 16 2 2004 14 https themeetingson webex com themeetingson tool record wx_recplay pdf 16 2 2004 15 http www ipswitch com Products WS_FTP Server 17 2 2004 16 http www ipswitch com purchase products ws_ftp_server html 17 2 2004 17 http www ipswitch com downloads index html 17 2 2004 18 http www interbel es ws ftp server 17 2 2004 19 http www serverwatch com stypes compare index php compare_RIRQ___ 17 2 2004 20 http www recursosvoip com netmeeting index php 18 2 2004 21 http www microsoft com windows netmeeting 18 2 2004 22 http www microsoft com downloads details aspx FamilyID 26c9da7c f778 4422 a6f4 efb8abba021e amp DisplayLang en 18 2 2004 23 http www meetingbywire com 18 2 2004 24 http www centra com products emeeting info asp 19 2 2004 25 http www microsoft com office livemeeting prodi
77. mportant to see the teacher while he she is teaching otherwise it would seem like there were nobody teaching In conclusion the video quality has to improve as well Normally there are more students who find videoconferences less effective than traditional classroom when they are at the remote site than when they are at the originating site While travel stress is reduced preparation and rehearsal time are increased The Teacher has to spend some time before every lecture insuring all the technical problems are dealt with The videoconference should not be too long since it is difficult for students to maintain concentration levels for considerable periods We really believe that this kind of distance education can develop the idea of educational equality and solve problems of discrimination of isolated areas So that one can attend any course wherever you are TESTING PROCEDURES The five currently used programs have been analyzed and in addition three alternative ones The main conclusion is that the three alternative programs OfficeIntercom Snag it and WebEX are worse or pretty much the same as the programs currently used Background Communicator CaptureNPrint and Camtasia respectively Furthermore another important topic is that Ivisit has a rating of 2 the value is out of five It is important also to note that each of all the evaluated attributes are partly subjective We have evalued the programs using the following methods su
78. n sharing problem solving and decision making within learning environment Take a course which is not on the university curriculum e Catch up with the educational programme e Teachers can enhance professional skills get additional speciality in pedagogy or have consultations with their teaching problems The main problems found are e Set up time e Audio problems students are more critical than teachers about this When there are two powerful audio signals at the same time two way audio is very sensitive to feedback The microphones are not able to separate background noises from voices and the current microphones are not comfortable enough So we believe 55 RDE Software Development the microphones should be changed so students will not get annoyed Another audio problem is the fact that the different audio sources need different sound levels A hardware solution like a sound checker should be incorporated in the system e Synchronization of audio and video Both teachers and students have to get used to that problem Maybe the teacher should not talk very fast and he she should wait longer than usual after asking questions to give the students the opportunity to answer e Video is not as important as audio But it is important since it gives the teacher the opportunity to control and evaluate the students work and permits also the possibility for the students to take turns by raising their hands In addition for students it is i
79. nd additional 10 MB Sound card with microphone and speakers To be useful the audio and video features need better requirements The package is free from Microsoft with most Windows operating systems It is possible to download version 3 01 in different languages for free See reference 22 This version is also included in Windows 2000 IVISIT Information obtained at references 2 and 4 It is a program that integrates audio video chat and messaging It is possible to use it in PC s and Macintosh computers Users can send text chat and audio both publicly and privately Ports UDP 9943 and UDP 56768 must be open for video communication Also Windows 2000 or ME have a security level so it must be lower The system continues to work even when names or IP numbers change The program can capture and transmit video and audio from a microphone and typed messages The video and audio can be recorded Programs like MSN or ICQ are not recommended because the files which are sent can be damaged In the future Ivisit will have a system for file storage and transfer The latest version will work with many NAT proxy Firewall In a forum we found the following opinions of users These are divided into pros and cons Pros The sound quality is lower than a telephone conversation but still pretty decent and it works with Windows and Mac Cons The interface is not that intuitive some preferences are buried in submenus and popup men
80. nd interrupting the lecture Also sometimes since there was a delay when the teacher heard the questions asked by students the teacher had already begun to talk about something else A possible solution for that audio delay could be an Audio compressor a hardware solution With the help of that device it is possible to send a smaller audio range than it actually is and on the other side of the communication re expand the audio range Video for the teacher is also an important feature so it should have more quality in the future It seems to be not so important for students In order to have an acceptable quality the connection should be at least 2 Mbits This kind of education method is really useful when the course uses for example Web CT e learning systems for educational institutions where notes and lectures can be retrieved and archived In addition students can save their essays and reports in advance and the teacher can also check them before the lecture Some conclusions obtained from the students questionnaires six of seven students think this system is a good way to teach also six of seven students said they would like to participate in another distance course In conclusion conventional and RDE methods are currently equal for teaching but the system can be improved in the future 5 5 2 Programs currently used In addition to how the RDE system functions the master program coordinator William D Walker was asked about the be
81. ndows 2000 Professional with Service Pack 3 Microsoft Windows XP Professional Red Hat Linux 7 2 Sun Solaris operating environment Versions 8 and 9 Citrix Metaframe XP Server Operating Systems and Prerequisites Operating system IBM eServer pSeries AIX Versions 5 1 and 5 2 CPU 2x475 MHz PowerPC PowerPC has Dynamic Resource Management that enables the addition or removal of processor Therefore in this case 2x475 MHz means that the CPU has two processors or higher recommended 2x375 MHz PowerPC minimum RAM 1GB RAM recommended 512MB minimum Disk space 1GB free disk space recommended to allow space for meetings SOOMB minimum Disk swap space 1GB RAM recommended 512MB minimum Operating system Sun Solaris operating environment Versions 8 and 9 CPU UltraSPARC III 1 GHz processor or higher recommended UltraSPARC HI 550 MHz processor minimum RAM 1GB RAM recommended 512MB minimum Disk space 1GB free disk space recommended to allow space for meetings SOOMB minimum Disk swap space 1GB RAM recommended 512MB minimum Operating system Microsoft Windows 2000 Server or Microsoft Windows Advanced Server with Service Pack 3 CPU Pentium II 400MHz or higher RAM 1 GB recommended 512 MB minimum Disk space 1 GB free disk space recommended to allow space for meetings 500 MB minimum Disk swap space 1GB RAM _ recommended 512MB minimum Video Requirements The server machine must have a video card installed
82. ndows NT version 4 Service Pack 6 or later 130 MB Minimum G3 or better 128 MB 800 x 600 pixels Mac OS X 10 2 or later 280 MB Minimum Pentium III Celeron 600 MHz or equivalent 128 MB 800 x 600 pixels Linux kernel 2 2 x or 2 4 x for the Intel x86 architecture GNU C Library glibc version 2 1 3 or later 2 2 4 or later recommended 200 MB Minimum 500 MHz 128 MB 800 x 600 pixels Solaris 7 or later 200 MB RDE Software Development Recommended Pentium 4 or equivalent 256 MB 1024 x 768 pixels Windows 2000 XP 550 MB Note Includes default drivers from NI Device Drivers CD Recommended G4 or better 256 MB 1024 x 768 pixels Mac OS X 10 2 or later 350 MB Recommended Pentium 4 or equivalent 256 MB 1024 x 768 pixels Red Hat Linux 7 0 or later Mandrake Linux 8 0 or later SUSE Linux 7 1 or later or Debian Linux 3 0 or later 300 MB Recommended 650 MHz 256 MB 1024 x 768 pixels Solaris 7 or later 300 MB Table 1 System requirements for LabVIEW Development System See reference 57 It is possible to download LabVIEW 7 Express Evaluation Software a free 30 Day trial Windows only on the Website at reference 59 but previously it is necessary to create the user profile information at reference 60 There are four different packages Base which includes basic test functions data acquisition instrument control and reporting and file I O It costs roughly 7480
83. nefits and problems that the programs have Several programs are currently used at the same time providing features such as application sharing chat video or audio The future goal is to get all these features in one program Regarding lectures in the future it would be good to get everybody to listen to them using loud speakers rather than through headsets because some people are not comfortable with them The speakers should be situated all around the classroom for good audio quality 49 RDE Software Development For the teacher it is important that a wireless microphone be used so that it provides flexibility The problem with the microphone is that it only has one communication channel on so it is not possible to have a private communication with a student or another teacher The following software programs are analyzed NETMEETING NetMeeting provides the RDE system with application sharing as well as chat With application sharing it is possible to remote control another computer or to be controlled by another computer The problem is that you can only remote control one computer at a time For that reason it is necessary to use a program called PC Duo which is able to control every computer connected NetMeeting can also be used to set the computers by remote control This feature is necessary when preparing a class before students get connected As for the white board some options do not work very well The pointer is not cl
84. nfo overview mspx 19 2 2004 26 http www techsmith com products snagit default asp 20 2 2004 27 http www techsmith com store default asp 20 2 2004 28 http www techsmith com download snagitfreetrial asp 20 2 2004 29 http www nch com au oi index html 23 2 2004 30 http www nch com au oi index html 23 02 2004 31 http www aset org au confs 11ms 1994 bc charbonneau html 27 4 2004 32 http www montageplus co uk teachers conferences htm 27 4 2004 33 http www intelecto net textos1 conferencias s5_11 pdf 27 4 2004 34 http www imv au dk medarbejdere bfib publ 60 pdf 28 4 2004 35 http www ieev uma es edutec97 edu97_co hoghielm htm 28 4 2004 36 http www fvc com eng webconferencing ctm_express htm 3 5 2004 37 http support fvc com eng docs release_notes asp 4 5 2004 38 http www marratech com download 5 5 2004 39 http www polycom com common flash weboffice swf 5 5 2004 40 ftp ftp lotus com pub lotusweb product domino Notes_65_DS_FINAL pdf 6 5 2004 41 http www 12 lotus com Idd doc uafiles nsf docs ST30c3 File BestPractices pdf 6 5 2004 42 http www lotus com products lotussametime nsf wdocs homepage 6 5 2004 61 RDE Software Development 43 https query lotus com passport eorder Express PO E1 amp part_number D5116LL D5CT2LL DS5 11 CLL amp catalog_url h
85. oard mode One computer projects to the smart board and displays only the whiteboard The other computer projects other applications that are used by the teacher to teach Nevertheless both computers can use any application 69 RDE Software Development Recording mode In this mode the program will be used to record all the audio video and applications shown during a lecture The interface looks as below Play Pause Stop Save Fast rewind l fi i 4 Fast rewind i E ss Figure 7 Interface from the Recording mode This interface should have several buttons for recording the lecture playing a lecture stopping or pausing what is being played or recorded etc Also it will be possible to save a lecture after recording in order to keep it and play it when it is considered appropriate 70 This document was created with Win2PDF available at http www daneprairie com The unregistered version of Win2PDF is for evaluation or non commercial use only
86. ook at themselves to check it they are centered in the screen and they may also want to look at the teacher These two windows can be placed on the left side as shown in 65 RDE Software Development Figure 1 shows In our opinion when a student asks a question he she should not be viewed on the screen that can make him her feel embarrassed Vertical toolbar Will be placed on the right side see Figure 1 It will have various buttons which will perform functions required in the system Text will be placed beneath those buttons to explain their function Sharing and remote control When this button is pressed by a student it will share part or all of his her desktop with another user or users so the screen of the student who is sharing can be seen The shared part could be a window an application the entire screen a mouse select region a user defined rectangle and so on for example some of the capturing methods that CAPTUREPRINT has In one of the sections of the main menu it will be possible to set all the features of the Sharing and Remote control like The IP number or group of IP numbers of the computers that will be able to see the shared parts What is shared choose one of the methods mentioned above Requesting control can be carried out in two different ways by using the chat window and by using audio when the teacher is involved For instance when a student asks the teacher something it would be helpful
87. oping a browser based version of the RDE software The possibility of working through firewalls is also desired Software interfaces such as LabView and HPVee should be looked at to determinate if the programming software interface can be developed in a similar manner Such an interface would be easy to program easy to modify and easy to create user operator panels But system speed and stability should not be sacrificed 4 METHODS 4 1 Internet searching We looked for Websites related with the six current programs used in the RDE system about video conferencing systems and browser based programs with the help of a well known search engine www google com Then we checked the first Websites found in order to get some important information We also tried to look at discussion forums to get some opinions from people who have already tried the programs As a result of this search we found sometimes other alternative programs which have different features than the ones currently used In these cases we also compiled the information about these programs in order to decide which one is better Also quite interesting information about video conferencing systems was found from the pedagogical viewpoint 4 2 Literature studies We have read the following books to learn more about video conference systems and testing procedures The integration of remote classrooms a distance education project using video conferencing ed 1996 Software Eng
88. or if some of the features should be dropped in order to make it easier Setting up Currently in the RDE system there are different programs for different functions multiparty application sharing video audio remote control chat whiteboard print screen etc Our aim is to get just one program that puts all those functions together So that only one program is used There would therefore be no difference between a student s and the teacher s program Initially settings must be selected to set up the student or teacher interface The same program will be installed on all the computers both teachers and students ones When the program is installed there will be an icon on the desktop for the overall system As mentioned above the same program will be installed on both student and teacher computers however the program configuration will differ That is there will be the teacher s version and the student s one The student s version will have only one mode However the teacher s version will consist of all the modes Audio video Board and Recording as well as the student s mode in order that the teacher can put himself herself in the student s place Because there are two different versions the security is guaranteed since the student s version will not have the same access permissions as the teacher s one So the students will be not able to change the system parameters which can destabilize the system Furthermore when
89. p the advantages of this type of education and to reduce the disadvantages To sum up we believe that this project has been useful to set the basis of the next step of the RDE System Software Development Project that is what is possible and what can be carried out in these kind of real time distance education systems And on the other hand what is impossible and what are the limitations Even though there have not been many RDE lectures yet it was possible to find out that this kind of education can be as good and efficient as the conventional one So the next step is to find an appropriate programming language and try to develop the RDE software interface It should be divided in different modules for the different applications and it should contain most of the good characteristics found during this project 60 RDE Software Development REFERENCES Veijo Meisalo ed 1996 The integration of remote classrooms a distance education project using video conferencing Department of Teacher Education Helsinki Roger S Pressman ed 1997 Software Engineering A practitioner s approach McGraw Hill Companies USA Gerard O Regan ed 2002 A Practical Approach to Software Quality Springer Verlag New York 1 www google com 10 2 2004 2 www ivisit com 10 2 2004 3 http www ivisit info 10 2 2004 3 http www softonic com informacion_extendida phtml n_id 9194 amp plat 1 10 2 2004 4 http www versiontracker com dyn
90. r dedicated connection recommended Video e Digital USB firewire or analogy colours video camera e Video capture card for analogy cameras and drivers if needed Audio Microphone Headset strongly recommended Sound card and drivers if needed Speakers or headset Headset strongly recommended Sound card and drivers if needed Free download at reference 53 WEBOFFICE Information obtained at reference 76 WebOffice is a program that works with data audio and video among the users on a real time communication You can build your own Buddy List with the people you are used to work with Then you have two different possibilities to connect with them Just clicking on the name of the person and the program indicates if this person is available for a connection or sending an invitation to the person for a private meeting like chat or videoconference Then you select the type of communication needed data audio video or some of them together like audio and video at the same time Another type can be added later if needed during the connection To add audio connections the user only has to show the telephone number or IP address of the person who they want to connect with To add video connections it is necessary to specify the speed of the connection as well as the number or address From the program s interface one can change some of the facilities of the audio or video For instance the volume of th
91. re three different views Standard compact and minimal in Camtasia and its four different toolbars are saved In WebEX there are not many options but the few ones are saved after setting Portability Camtasia is only available for Windows WebEX is available for Windows and Macintosh Rating Camtasia has the following benefits three different input recording sources four different toolbars and hotkeys for different functions and its three different views and its different toolbars are saved after setting On the other hand it has problems such as it is a little expensive and slows down the PC That is why the program can not be run in a computer where more applications are running WebEX is nice since it is free and it is available for Windows and Macintosh However it does not have many options and although is not as slow as Camtasia 1t still slows down the computer 5 4 User manual The User Manual is placed in Appendix A 48 RDE Software Development 5 5 Interviews In this section we stated the most significant information from several interviews that were made This subheading is divided in two sections one for each different topic 5 5 1 Pedagogical The interviews were given to Lennart Sch n and Thorbj rn Andersson who are teachers of the Department of Technology at Orebro University They both worked with the current RDE system Lennart was the teacher who taught 7 students during 16 lectures given at a distan
92. re will be a section in the menu on the top which could be called Video Some of the possible screen setups can be Student viewpoint Only home students Only classrooms X students or X classrooms where X could mean 1 2 3 or 4 for example Regarding audio the computer that runs this mode should have a headset installed which is used by the teacher for talking and listening freely wherever he she wants on audio port The messages from Question button this button is pressed by student when he she has a question will be shown in this mode Board mode In this mode all the applications that are running on the computer are shared with all the students Those applications will be projected to the front white board and smart board since there will be two teacher s computers running this mode This mode has a vertical toolbar similar to the student s mode see it above But in this mode sharing is active by default so pressing Sharing and remote control button will enable the user to remote control the application Below the screen of this mode is shown Fee cano de Canina E yet ee on bee peter PL E ati Ut Co Jer Eg cube sra ajos y FP ft e LR ra de El tal ee eine pee for SRP m fe ARA a BEY sea feos MEE eR Bay mr Sots vef ted Y Cane ee Figure 6 Interface from the Board mode As was said above there will be two teacher computers using this B
93. riticism the pupils clearly showed willingness to continue learning in this way if only the tempo of instruction was faster and if the teachers became more competent in it A part of the pupil talk between the classrooms was related to the subject matter while a part was more on the level of jokes Some pupils showed a willingness to communicate more with the Kilpisj rvi pupils and exchange ideas with them The meaning of video link through which they were able to see the other classroom was considered rather significant at least when compared with the use of audio connection alone While responding the pupils felt like responding to the whole virtual class including the remote pupils as well This means that they were at least to some extent aware of the presence of the other group although they did not directly communicate much with each other The pupils seemed to have understood that in this way they could get to know pupils who are living in a different kind of environment The major issue is how to use telecommunications to enhance meaningful interaction between the pupils As a whole most of the pupils experienced these lessons as more strenuous compared with the instructional setting where the teacher is on site Here are some of the comments of being a remote learner it s the distance you can t get any eye contact you see only something like a photo or that the movements are just like there was a robot or something
94. rpolation share results and applications Test and measurement SW support for math and graphics instrumental control concurrency data management GUI support interactive development and debugging environment building user interfaces and performing I O Operating systems Windows 95 Macintosh Sun https sine ni com apps we niup ni a p GB_LVEVAL amp lang US amp tmp2 Download http www agilent com find vee Table 2 Comparison between HP VEE and LabVIEW Download and Price HP VEE can be downloaded free full capacity 30 day evaluation copy LabVIEW is possible to download also a free 30 day trial but only for Windows About the purchase there are four different packages 35 RDE Software Development e Base which includes basic test functions data acquisition instrument control and reporting and file I O It costs roughly 7480 SEK e Full this includes wide range of I O 450 analysis math functions advanced UI design tools and all base package functionality It cost roughly 15000 SEK e Professional that includes premium development system tools for large projects application deployment and all full package functionality It costs roughly 26274 SEK e Developer Suite which includes bundle LabVIEW with NI SW control and test editions best value for toolkits and three new toolkits for Pro version It costs roughly 32288 SEK 5 2 Literature studies 5 2 1 Video conferencing system
95. s Company Walker ICS for the department of technology at Orebro University David Hakansson He was helping William D Walker to study and develop the RDE system Lennart Sch n Teacher of the Department of Technology at Orebro University He was the teacher who taught lectures using RDE system Thorbj rn Andersson Teacher of the Department of Technology at Orebro University He handled the technical problems during the RDE system lectures RDE Software Development 1 INTRODUCTION The RDE Real time Distance Education system was developed at Department of Technology of Orebro University by William Walker It allows the use of all the benefits of electronics technology in the service of the education The goal of that system is to get a cheaper and easier way to educate people wherever they are Overcoming distances and isolated places enabling courses that are not on the university curriculum to be available catching up with the courses in case students missed lessons enhancing professional skills and knowledge in this new technology and much more can be done in a safe stable and flexible manner This paper deals with all the studies which were done to understand better the current system in order to determinate the best characteristics that future system software should have For that reason the current used programs and some alternative ones as well have been studied in order to understand their features and how they work
96. s it by pressing the OK button of the question the student will be able to be heard by the others If another student wants to ask another question while the teacher is answering the first one that question will be queued Therefore a queue of a certain number of questions the teacher should be able to set this number as he or she considers appropriate can be set to avoid getting too many questions Another solution could be to wait for the student who asked the first question and to disable the Question button which can turn from red colour to green when the question is finished That solution is not as efficient as the other is but it is easier Chat Makes it possible to write to One student A group of students Or everyone including the teacher In the last case that would be a question or a suggestion An alert light could be turned on to inform the rest of the students that a question was asked The teacher would answer by talking Chat might be a powerful tool for Forum Where a student can discuss with some classmates some parts of the lecture that is being done For instance when a student does not understand something but this student considers that it is not necessary to ask the teacher In that case he she can just ask their classmates Additional information For example when a student wants to ask another for a file or when he she wants to look at another student s desktop Video Students must l
97. s specified Local System WS_FTP Server Manager olx File View Help Ba WS_FTP Servers Local System A armstrong ipswitch com General Options B documents WS_FTP Server Manager Firewall Settings x A tutorials ips To change the IP Address used in response to PASY commands issued by clients enter the desired address here To restrict the ports used for data connections enter the allowable range here IP Address 156 21 50 11 Port Range f 240 1400 Cancel Help Figure 7 WS_FTP interface See reference 49 Requirements RDE Software Development Windows NT 4 0 Windows 2000 XP 2003 200 MHz Pentium II or latest 128 MB RAM It must be run in a server or workstation that has static IP The price is 395 and 490 with Service Agreement one year of telephone support and upgrades see the next Website at reference 16 It is possible to download evaluation software at reference 17 5 1 2 Alternative programs SNAG IT Information obtained at reference 26 This program is studied as an alternative to CaptureNPrint It captures screen images text video and print output from the Windows PC quickly enhance with the in line editor and comprehensive image management It provides capturing editing and sharing content from the Windows PC This is accomplished in the following three steps Capture Edit
98. see Also the interface is not that intuitive Efficiency The functions that are used in NetMeeting are low time consuming applications In Ivisit it is possible to resize the windows to make them very small or poor quality and you can choose not to watch yourself However it does not have Speech level detection so it transmits more data than if it would have that feature Maintainability The chat and whiteboard windows in NetMeeting can be placed as the user wants and those changes are saved for the next time In Ivisit you can not save the video of the other participants and you can not save the placement of your own window Portability NetMeeting is only available for Windows Ivisit is available not only for Windows but also for Macintosh Security NetMeeting has data encryption user authentication and password protection The latest version of Ivisit will work with many NAT proxy Firewall 43 RDE Software Development Rating The advantages of NetMeeting are the following it is free can only work on Windows platform it is possible to send files share programs in a frame and change among the different shared windows remote control other PC s in a meeting uses different icons for the different functionalities easy to use it is a processor consuming program the changes for chat and whiteboard windows are saved and it provides data encryption user authentication and password protection On the oth
99. systems Windows 95 Windows 98 Windows 2000 Windows ME l Windows XP l l Windows NT Linux Macintosh l Download __http bcom freehosting net download htm _http www nch com au oi index html Functionality l Satisfied Poor Usability l Fair Fair Efficiency l Satisfied Satisfied Maintainability l Satisfied Satisfied Portabilit l Fair Fair X X lt Y Security l Satisfied Number of users l 100 each group Rating out of 5 Table 3 Comparison between BC and OfficeIntercom Price The cost of the OfficeIntercom is for a Professional User License this license is for a single user of OfficeIntercom plus Silver Support Service email only support for 1 month from the date of purchase If you buy it online you get a discount Functionality With BC there are two different modes to talk in one mode it is necessary to press a key and hold it in order to be heard and in the other mode after pressing a key the talker is heard all the time untill the key is pressed again A black list can be defined for the people who are in the same room as the talker With that option the user will not hear the echo produced when others talk In addition BC is a multiparty program which can accommodate up to 100 users per group 40 RDE Software Development In OfficeIntercom it is possible to create a Favourites List It is not necessary to enter the IP number instead an email a
100. t was only necessary to view students at home the screen could be divided into some areas for some of the home students But not too many video images can be displayed since the system would slow down see Figure 3 In a particular case in which there would be no home students the screen could be divided also into areas for some of the classroom video images see Figure 4 In other cases combinations of the above scenario are also possible see Figure 5 e Your World File Settings View Windows Help OU Student 9 Ix gt 183kbps 8 4 fps gt OU Student 10 OU Student 2 x 65kbps 98 d a Y 388kbps 6 0 fps gt Ready uptime 01 39 30 I Figure 3 Video from teacher s viewpoint Only home students shown 67 RDE Software Development Med visit Share Your World OU Teacher Far Y Video KG Students Right here uptime 01 12 52 Figure 4 Video from teacher s viewpoint Only classrooms shown bod visit Share Your World File Settings View Windows Help OU Teacher Far x KG Students Right vw Video 14 98 fps gt 76kbps 12 0 fps cid OU Student 9 x OU Student 10 OU Student 2 Y 38 8kbps 7 2 fps gt 156kbps 9 4 fps Y 256kbps 7 9fps Y mi uce b mod 3Private Ready uptime 01 38 12 Figure 5 Video from teacher s viewpoint Classrooms and home students shown 68 RDE Software Development To be able to choose among the various screen setups the
101. to be specified such as select video device set device to handle output and input of audio set the volume of the audio received RDE Software Development set the volume of the audio recorder by your microphone adjust the silence suppression level to avoid being listened when you are not talking below of this level the audio will be muted The interface of Marratech is shown in figure 11 Participants Voice over IP The Marratech Work Environment To talk to your group simply press the has room for everyone The Participants microphone button Low delay crystal area gives you an overview of who is clear voice over IP provided by Global currently present IP Sound Crom IP Souno Press release ru aa me se Merainch Work Eneronment Marratech Launches New Software Suite For Eficient Viorkplace And Business Communications la E The do it emoa mames A beware eeni br the empiro m ai ems ma mne a a LLT meca Every one w bare PRS Cyntho The press release is whined oad JOA OM Meerese M te abo adine a a Whiteboard Chat Video The Whiteboard area is where all users can interact by Send a small message or web link to If desired video can be used witthin your sharing MS Office documents images and drawings everyone or to only one person environment enabling you to meet others with high quality video Pointers markers live camera snapshots and other tools tea are avalable to
102. to universities or simply because they or rather their parents are not satisfied with school learning e Those who want to catch up with the programme if they missed some lessons or had to move to another place with their parents e Those who want to get some vocational education on the curriculum of a foreign school Distance education is not less important for the teachers e To enhance their professional skills knowledge and qualification and get the correspondent certificate 28 RDE Software Development e To get some additional speciality in pedagogy e To have consultations on different problems DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION AND MEDIA SCIENCE AARHUS UNIVERSITY DENMARK Information obtained at reference 24 Good sound quality is more important than visual quality Transmission of visuals and the possibility for teacher and student to be in eye contact are of course important for the choice of video conferencing as opposed to audio or computer conferencing but in higher education voice is the main medium for communication Compared with normal class room teaching video conferencing have to be more modularised The teacher must plan e The full session very carefully according to a clear time schedule e Define closed sections with duration of approximately 30 minutes Each section may be started with either a short summary of main themes in the course material and or a presentation of a problem for discussion T
103. ttp www ibm com software info ecatalog html amp country USA amp product_page E105917G22803D19 6 5 2004 44 http www spr com metrics qualityPrograms htm 14 5 2004 45 http www meetingcenter net record_play htm 18 5 2004 45 http www techsmith com images snagit screenshots whatsnew_main_Irg html 19 6 2004 47 http www 5star shareware com Graphics Screen Capture cnp screenshot html 19 6 2004 48 http www techsmith com images camtasiastudio tour tour_record_2lrg html 19 6 2004 49 http interbel es productos wsftpserver img_capturas capt_Olbig gif 19 6 2004 50 http www techsmith com products snagit snagvsprintscreen asp 19 6 2004 51 http www marratech com userman pro_34 01 0_introduction html 19 6 2004 52 http www cuworld com 19 6 2004 53 https www cuworld com store guest_signup asp 19 6 2004 54 http www lotus911 com images 3_sametime_1_3 gif 23 7 2004 55 http www ni com labview 24 7 2004 56 http www iit edu labview Dummies html 24 7 2004 57 http ni com labview requirements 24 7 2004 58 http www ni com aap 24 7 2004 59 https sine ni com apps we niup ni ap GB_LVEVAL amp lang US amp tmp2 24 7 2004 60 http sine ni com apps we niup ni 24 7 2004 61 http ni com labview how_to_buy 24 7 2004 62 http www webex com 26 7 2004 63 http www webex com customercare downloads webex html 26 7 2004 64 http www wsipc org Information siteinfo htm 26 7 2004 65 http
104. tual classroom community The pupils in Kilpisjarvi experienced that they were an equal part of the virtual classroom and the interaction between them and a teacher in Helsinki was intensive In the future the interaction between the pupils in Helsinki and pupils in Kilpisjarvi should be encouraged We should also pay more attention to the interests of the pupils in Helsinki and try to find out how this kind of a virtual classroom could benefit them as well Globalization has common encounters with distance education In order to overcome the disadvantages caused by remoteness and geographic isolation rural schools in many countries make 38 RDE Software Development extensive use of distance education technologies In such a way rural education has been one of the forerunners in making use of those opportunities that technologies provide Thus many rural schools are familiar with connections outside of the local settings and with co operation with other schools and educational institutions Along with the development of the communication and information technologies interaction between a single school and the outer world will most likely increase for example in terms of networking The school of the future is a combination of virtual and physical a meeting point for global and local 5 2 2 Testing Of the two books studied to aid in the research of the capabilities of programs Roger Pressman 1997 and Gerard O Regan 2002 agree that test
105. uld try to keep in their minds some important points such as learn the system in advance give questionnaires to the students feedback incorporate peer social interaction and try to give the same attention to all the groups 59 RDE Software Development 8 CONCLUSIONS After this study we know that it is feasible to have all the required applications of the RDE system together in the same program and at the same time be flexible that means the user can choose which applications he she wants in every moment and the user should be able to have his her own settings personal configuration The main features that the future RDE should have have been obtained too The Marratech NetMeeting configuration is an alternative to the six programs used at the beginning of the project It seems to work quite well and is easier for the student to handle The drawback of that new solution is the price 45000 SEK for an e meeting room We also know now that is not possible or it is not recommended because of the difficulty to develop the future software with HP VEE and LabVIEW software They are more orientated for low level applications such as test acquisition or control Regarding the pedagogical part in this report there are some important things the teacher should do when he she teaches in this kind of educational model which is different from conventional teaching methods That s why the pedagogical part is quite important in order to develo
106. unctionalities There are many different ways of capturing and saving to different output formats This way the user can decide the quality of the capture and size of the file Regarding usability the program is quite easy to use even though it has many features The only disadvantage comparing with CaptureNPrint is that it is four times more expensive CaptureNPrint is very similar to Snag It The most important drawback with respect to Snag It is that CaptureNPrint does not have as many functionalities On the other hand it is cheaper and maybe even easier to use 46 RDE Software Development The table 6 shows a comparison between Camtasia and WebEX CAMTASIA A 4 37 52 0 CO Company Techsmith WebEx Communications l http www techsmith com O Homepage http www techsmith com products studi o default asp lid CamtasiaStudioHome PA It is solution for recording editing and E A user interactions in any publishing screen video presentations eee application the computer s desk top or a WebEx meeting Price SEK 2264 FREE Description f e It can be used to record video of Remote control Whiteboard Operating systems Windows 95 Windows 2000 _ Windows ME X Macintosh l l Download http www techsmith com download stud http www wsipc org Informati A ia i oniskeinke him Functionality l Satisfied l Poor Fair Usability S
107. up the whiteboard And the Teacher2 computer runs NetMeeting and Marratech the whiteboard of Marratech is set up in order to show PowerPoint presentations Both computers Teacherl and Teacher2 share the whiteboard of NetMeeting Finally the Audio Video computer runs Marratech in the same way as in the first solution it manages both the chat and videos Students can take control of the PowerPoint presentation which is running with Marratech Teacher2 computer In this aspect Marratech is different to NetMeeting since there is nobody that acts as the meeting moderator So whenever a user presents material in the Whiteboard the only thing he she has to select is Lead Page Changes and leads the others directly to the current Whiteboard page To sum up there is no possibility to receive a request asking for the control before taking it like in NetMeeting that information was obtained from Marratech support support marratech com Some selected characteristics in the options of the Video part in Marratech are Requested Bandwidth was set to 30Kbps Image quality was set to 10 and Limit capture frame rate and Resizable window were selected the explanation of these characteristics can be found in the section 5 1 4 where Marratech is explained These features were set in order for the video part to work better on the student computers In regards to using the smart board with Marratech some aspects should be commented
108. us when they could all be in the same window Problem with the audio see programs like Panther and iChat AV Interface is so un user friendly and their Directory structures is confusing and For audio and image is better iChat Besides another con is the presence of a variable audio delay The figure 3 shows an example of the Ivisit interface RDE Software Development Bruce Biegel v7 Video 5 09 fps babiegel aol com 7 Audio amp talk 3 D Record Figure 3 Ivisit interface See reference 3 Requirements e For Windows is required Windows 95 98 2000 ME XP or NT 4 0 Pentium 90 MHz 16 MB RAM and an Internet connection e For Macintosh is required PowerPC processor System 8 6 9 2 2 OSX 10 2 or greater 20 MB free RAI QuickTime 6 0 6 5 for OS X gt Sound Manager v3 1 gt Open Transport v1 6 For both Windows and Macintosh it is possible to download a free version iVisit 3 1 5 for Windows and iVisit 3 0 4 and iVisit 3 0 4X See reference 3 BACKGROUND COMMUNICATOR BC Information obtained at reference 5 It is a voice chat program designed to work in a background mode Up to 100 groups in the user list can be created and up to 100 users can be placed into them a user must be included into one or more groups Group Activation key and mechanism to each group can be assigned group becomes active when the key is pressed When a group is active BC transmits the voice
109. uter speed You may experience performance problems Figure 13 CUSeeMe interface See reference 52 in user manual under Support A number of videos can be placed in different positions The same with the chat it is possible to make 1t smaller or larger and set it where it is desirable Diagnostics this area shows how the system is performing Frames Per Second FPS connection speed etc It will also display any warning messages if the system is being over taxed Expanding the Participants List also known as Collapsing the Local Video in large room full of people it may not be able to see all the names in the Participants List unless it is scrolled Next to the local video in the upper right there is a little upside down arrow By clicking on that arrow it can be expanded the Participants List and collapse the own video Or vice versa Lightning Bolt this is a special icon that will not always be seen The creator of the room will be able to see this icon If there is a person in that room that the creator does not wish to be there the creator can Zap him her That person will be removed from the room Pause and Stop video privacy option while in conference it can paused or stopped the video it sends at any time Clicking either option on the video window freezes the video frame until you click it again Drag and drop video unless the meeting moderator is controlling the display it can be chosen w
110. ved however The pupils in Kilpisj rvi mainly responded They seldom expressed opinions or asked anything spontaneously Apparently in a situation where the teacher is physically present the communication between the teacher and the pupils is more immediate and spontaneous compared to situations where instruction is mediated by many things Groups size could be one of the influential factors In situations where the teacher was talking a long time to the remote group pupils in the local classrooms felt frustrated They began to chat more with other which in turns increased the noise level As to the interaction between the pupils of the two classrooms there was rather little of it The minimal pupil interaction between the classrooms was probably partly related to the frontal mode of instruction There was not much time or opportunity for pupil pupil interaction Neither was there much interest in the other class at least at this stage of the project The fact that the teachers made the majority of pedagogical moves is parallel with the general impression based on non systematic observation the distance lessons observed were teacher controlled On the other hand the distance lessons were not more teacher controlled than conventional lessons on the average The pupils also noticed that teachers get nervous and irritated much easier during distance lessons than during conventional lessons On the other hand some pupils had a feeling that teac
111. ware interfaces explained in this section were studied to determinate if the programming software interface can be developed in a similar manner HP VEE Information obtained at references 65 68 and 70 HP VEE is a powerful visual programming language that simplifies the development of engineering test and measurement software In the HP VEE development environment engineers design programs 29 RDE Software Development by linking visual objects also called devices into block diagrams Features provided in HP VEE include Support for engineering math and graphics Instrument control Concurrency Data management GUI support Test sequencing Interactive development and debugging environment HP VEE can be used to control instruments and store the measured data in the computer to be displayed saved or graphed for future use The last release of HP VEE is 4 0 In this version HP VEE uses a compiler to improve the execution speed of programs The compiler translates an HP VEE program into byte code that is executed by an interpreter embedded in HP VEE By analyzing the control structures and data type use of an HP VEE program the compiler determines the evaluation order of devices eliminates unnecessary run time decisions and uses appropriate data structures HP VEE programs are constructed by connecting devices together to form block diagrams A simple HP VEE program is displayed in Figure 15 HP VEE has an extensive colle
112. www hpl hp com hpjournal 98may may98a13 pdf 27 7 2004 66 http www hp com 27 7 2004 67 http www agilent com find vee 28 7 2004 68 http we home agilent com cgi bin bvpub agilent editorial cp_MiscEditorial sp NAV_ID 12247 536883294 02 amp NAV_FROM_REF 536889956 536883294 00 amp LANGUAGE_CODE eng amp CONTENT_KEY 428653 amp ID 428653 amp CO UNTRY_CODE US 28 7 2004 69 http www agilent com find vrf 28 7 2004 70 http cp literature agilent com litweb pdf 5988 6302EN pdf 29 7 2004 71 http support microsoft com default aspx scid http support microsoft com 80 support kb article s q247 8 72 asp amp NoWebContent 1 31 7 2004 72 http www xoanan com 2 8 2004 73 http www xoanan com windowsce Snaplt htm 2 8 2004 74 http www hytekautomation com products html 8 8 2004 75 http www techsmith com products studio tour publish asp 15 9 2004 76 http www polycom com products_services 1 1443 pw 37 3771 00 html 16 9 2004 62 RDE Software Development APPENDIX A The goal of this User s manual is to explain how we would like the system to work For this purpose we have explained in this subheading how we would like the main program s interface to look and how all the buttons and options should be However this is a theoretical model we are ignorant of whether the model can be developed in the future
113. y responsiveness innovativeness and supportiveness All these elements of audio teaching seem to make it more suitable for adult education than for a school environment The studies reveal that students who are distant from the lecturer are keener on the medium that those students who are in the same place with lecturer Usually students felt that the teachers paid too much attention to the equipment The conclusion was these lessons are too slow On the other hand the learning results have been at least as good as in normal classroom instruction Some conclusions e For the acceptance of participants sound quality seems to be more important than image quality e The quality loss of sound and image quality by reducing transmission speed from 384 to 128 kbit s seems not to lead to complete refusal of the medium itself e Didactically the image of the professor or students on the screen seems to be less important than the display of other information from a connected overhead camera or the possibility to share common computer applications e Opportunities for individualized teacher learner interaction can only be offered to small groups of participants However large screen projections can provide passive participation for larger groups e Videoconferences should not exceed a total duration of one hour With video conferencing it has been seen to be difficult to maintain concentration for a long session It is necessary for students to concentrate

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