Video Conference on a Network

[TechSupp]

Just been asked by the head if we can video conference, and after discussion it has been decided that we try it in the school first between classrooms etc. as a way of improving the pupils communication skills. Now the technical question..whats the best way and it needs to be free or cheapish.

Could we use a decent webcam and software i.e.msn messenger as my only contact with this was in the early days of videoconferencing over dial up and later ISDN with Netmeeting.

Forgot to mention it would be nice to have more than one user visible at a time i.e. multi person conference. Not uptodate with MS Mesenger so sorry if these seem simple questions :-)

[GrumbleDook]

Speak with your RBC. They are likely to offer something that you can use. Personally I use iChat or Skype, but for the school we use Tandberg equipment over ISDN, not even touching our network.

[FN-GM]

You could do it by getting a Asterisk VOIP server & use X-Lite softphones, they allow you to use webcam.

Its easy and free!

Z

[TechSupp]

Our Broadband network does have a booking system for use of their areawide video conferencing network but we are just wanting to look at this at the moment before going with something to contact other schools. Bit an internal project at the moment, so thats why we are looking at purely school network at the moment.

[FN-GM]

Well the VOIP can be entirely internal as well...

Sorry I think I am a little lost here

Z

[SimpleSi]

I've sucessfully used Skype for this with the MS VX-6000 lifecam.

Its expensive for a webcam (£50-60) but it has a good resolution and is wide-angle which is good for viewing whole class groups and is much cheaper than the semi-pro-ones (£300>)

We use these with an an external cheap microphone.

Sometimes it can take a bit of time to get a connection up and running (due to Skype being free and therefore being at mercy of their servers being up and running properly) but once up - it it pretty reliable (we just did a link last Friday with an ex-teacher in Austrailia in a mini X-Factor contest and it stayed up for 3 hours with no probs )


regards

Simon

[plexer]

Person to person within school netmeeting using ip addresses it's installed with XP conf.exe, possible to install under vista but 2 new windows apps available for that can't remember their names at the moment.

For external your rbc/lea should have an E164 number for you which is a standard for vc between places, the rbs should also have a gatekeeper setup that is connected to the gatekeeper hierachy.

Another alternative is flash meeting this is suitable for multi person conferences our rbc E2BN have a flash meeting server.

We did a successfull vc to gordonstoun in scotland last night for our presentation evening as one of our students who's there couldn't come down for it.

Ben