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Communication between students and educators is more critical than ever in today's schools. Budget cutbacks and growing demands on shrinking resources, however, have hampered the implementation of effective communications systems using new digital technologies such as on-demand video. Fortunately, these new technologies have become more affordable, powerful and flexible to meet the complex communication needs, not only of schools, but government facilities, hospitals, and the corporate world, as well.
With the installation of MediaEdge, Grass Valley helped Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California update its aging and convoluted communication and announcement system with a competitively priced system that offers many customization features and moves the campus into the video age.
Wesley Laporte, the ASB (Associated Student Body) president at Live Oak High School, was in charge of the project.
"Our first idea was a TV in every classroom. We looked into coaxial but it was too expensive, and wireless was not efficient. Then we looked at video over IP. Several companies came in and gave demos. We decided on Grass Valley because they had competitive pricing and a customizable system."
The MediaEdge video distribution system meets the school's growing communication needs by providing campus-wide live broadcast capabilities, as well as support for video-on-demand content. Using MediaEdge-STB set-top-boxes installed in all 50 classrooms, faculty members can play on-demand content or tune to live broadcasts from the centrally located server. Video content is distributed using the school's existing Ethernet network.
The set-top-boxes operate off of a Gig E network, which is connected to the MediaEdge server. The server consists of the MediaEdge-SVS server software running on an Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz system, with 1GB of RAM, a 250GB Raid1 hard disk array for video storage and an MVRD2000 real-time MPEG encoding card for live video streaming.
The students broadcast live morning announcements campus-wide during the homeroom period, from a studio with a greenscreen, located in the Associated Student Body office. The school can also maintain an instructional video archive, available for playback in any classroom, at any time, without prior scheduling. This means that the Math or Science Department no longer has to share just one VHS tape. Using an encoder card to capture from videotape, content is played into the system once, then any teacher can play it back from the MediaEdge server, at any time — even if another teached is concurrently playing it.
Live Oak High School's video distribution system was planned and implemented by one student and two faculty advisors, working in their spare time during the school year. It has already enhanced the school's communications. This same technology is a flexible and cost effective way for any institution or corporation to change the way it communicates with employees or customers.
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