video conferencing/remote classroom

[Avatar28]

My principal asked me to look into this today. We have a student at one of our middle schools who needs to be able to view a class at a nearby high school. We are trying to figure out what our best option for this will be. Some sort of video conferencing solution would seem to be the best approach. We would need to be able to see the board and, preferably, the teacher. If the camera could be remotely operated by the student for tracking and zoom or would autotrack that would be ideal.

 

Both schools have gigabit fiber connections to our WAN so bandwidth is not a problem. I was thinking about the possibility of a high quality webcam and skype or a similar application as a lower-cost possibility. If you think we need some sort of true video conferencing solution, that should be doable as well. Any thoughts on the best approach for this?