Tasmanian schools’ access to broadband

Ange and I recently toured Tasmania on a reconnaissance mission as part of our project to develop rich and rewarding video conference programs.

Our itinerary included:

• meeting with folks from the Tasmanian Department of Education and Catholic Education Office
• visiting these schools connected to the National Broadband Network (and in one case, a school with its own satellite connection to high-speed internet)
• cajoling staff of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery to playtest a game we’re developing for iPad
• experiencing the wonders of Mona – of course – how could we not?

I could go on and on about our forthcoming game (and I will, soon!) and/or Mona, but the focus of this post is what we learned about the far end of video conferencing in the early-stages of the NBN – and the implications of that for what we do at our end.

Unfortunately, to date there are no public schools connected to the NBN because the Tasmanian government is locked into a whole-of-government contract with Telstra. In fact, there are only two schools in Australia that are currently enjoying the high-speed internet that fibre-to-the-premises affords: Circular Head Christian School and St Peter Chanel, both in the small town of Smithton in north-west Tasmania.

The VC technology that the Museum will use is Polycom, and although most schools don’t have that gear at their end, we intend to make our programs work with various far-end technologies. Our thinking: as long as the far-end school has a large screen so they have a decent view of us and our content, and a camera so that we can see them, we can make it work. Of course, bandwidth is an issue. If the connection breaks, or even if it’s really slow, the experience will be less compelling. And because we want to explore the optimal possibilities, we’ll target schools that have high bandwidth. But knowing it’ll take a while for the NBN to roll out, we’ll attempt to serve everyone.

Our programs will combine:

• live discussion and close-ups of collection objects
• screen-based presentations including animated slideshows and websites
• using green-screen technology, whatever combinations of the two we can come up with to make the experience dialogic

Ideas we are tossing around include:

• a game show program – pitting school against school – including segments such as mystery object, pick-a-box, guess the meaning of obsolete words and phrases, quiz questions
• an interactive object theatre program for young children
• a historical skills program

Looking forward!

Related posts:

• Remote but live and participatory
• Remotely fantastic!
• Junior playtest redux
• Museum’s iPad game Create[s] World
• Video conferencing futures