CSS News and Announcements http://www.css.washington.edu/news en-us Nucleus CMS v3.41 Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://www.css.washington.edu/blog/nucleus/nucleus2.gif CSS News and Announcements http://www.css.washington.edu/news Computer Classrooms Available Autumn Quarter 2009 http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/12918 http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/12918
Two 45-seat and one 25-seat computer classroom will be operating in Mary Gates Hall, using Dell's On Demand Desktop Streaming solution. To reserve a MGH computer classroom or to view additional classroom information, please click here.

Please note Learning and Scholarly Technologies will be maintaining these rooms through the end of Spring Quarter 2009. These rooms will be closed during Summer Quarter 2009 while the new computer systems are installed and tested.]]> General http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/12918 Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:34:47 -0800 Notice to the University Community http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/11725 http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/11725 medialib@u.washington.edu or via phone at 206-543-6051. Due to the fragility of 16mm films these formats will no longer be available for viewing. Please contact the ULMC at the above email/phone for other options for viewing 16mm film content.

The Educational Media Collection (EMC) web site will remain active as the EMC titles are consolidated into the ULMC. If the title you are seeking is no longer found at this site, please check the ULMC catalog at: http://www.lib.washington.edu/media/

The ULMC is located on the mezzanine level of the Odegaard Undergraduate Library. Hours of operation for Winter Quarter 2009 (January 5-March 20, 2009) excluding holidays* are:


Monday-Thursday: 8 am-Midnight
Friday 8 am-9 pm
Saturday 11 am-9 pm
Sunday 1 pm-Midnight


*See the ULMC website for holiday hours: (http://www.lib.washington.edu/about/hours/media.html)
]]> General http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/11725 Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:13:12 -0800 More Students Are Watching Classroom Video Online http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/10209 http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/10209
Classroom Support Services, provides digital audio, video, and screencasting services for students and instructors. We have also seen a marked increase in the viewing of on-line classroom lecture video and audio content. In March 2008, we served 4.2 TB (4,200 GB) of digital lecture content to students over the Internet.


Interesting Stats for Autumn Quarter, 2008:

32 UW Classrooms support automated digital audio recording and Podcasting.
14 UW CLassrooms support automated digital video recording and screencasting.
22 UW Courses are using our Screencasting service.
71 Hours of screencasting recordings are recorded per week.
22 UW Classrooms are using our Podcasting service.
81 Hours of digital audio is being recorded per week.
7,990 enrolled students have access to this digital lecture content.]]> General http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/10209 Wed, 1 Oct 2008 07:54:00 -0700 Move over, podcasting -- screencasting's a growing trend http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/7664 http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/7664 Move over, podcasting -- screencasting's a growing trend

Jan. 24, 2008
Move over, podcasting -- screencasting's a growing trend
By Robert Roseth
News and Information

"Podcasting is so yesterday, pedagogically speaking. Today it's all about video, or as the cognoscenti call it here, screencasting. And as with the earlier generation of audio production, the UW is in the forefront of providing instructors with the tools to make video happen without lifting a finger."

Click to read more.
]]> General http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/7664 Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:11:18 -0800 Colette Vogele: Podcasting, New Media and The Law http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/7327 http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/7327 Thursday, January 31, 2008
3:00 - 4:30 p.m.
The Walker-Ames Room, Kane 225

Join Colette Vogele, co-author of the Podcasting Legal Guide: Rules for the Revolution and author of the legal issues chapter of The Business Podcasting Book: Launching, Marketing, and Measuring Your Podcast, for a discussion on copyright issues. Vogele's expertise in new media copyright law will be of interest to instructors and others who make classroom audio and video recordings available to students on the Web.

A question and answer session will follow the main presentation.

About the speaker:

Colette Vogele heads the firm Vogele & Associates, which advises individuals, businesses, and non-profit organizations on a range of copyright, trademark, trade secret, patent, and privacy issues as they relate to technology, new media and the arts. Vogele grew up in the Pacific Northwest and is an Honors Program graduate in Political Science from the University of Washington. She earned her law degree cum laude at George Washington University Law School.

This seminar series is sponsored by Learning & Scholarly Technologies, the Center for Instructional Development & Research, Educational Outreach, Computing & Communications, UW Libraries, Computer Science & Engineering, the iSchool, Health Sciences Academic Services & Facilities, and Classroom Support Services.]]> General http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/7327 Thu, 6 Dec 2007 10:47:48 -0800 Classroom Support Services Brings the Classroom to the Web Using VGA2USB Frame Grabber http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/6816 http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/6816
University instructional support services are often understaffed, operating with limited budgets and automated digital content work flow processes. At the University of Washington, these constraints were evidenced by a lack of in-class digital recording technologies. To support its online learning initiatives, the school relied on staff or student operators to record classroom content with digital video cameras and manually upload that content to the web.

Searching for an efficient screen capture solution the university’s Classroom Support Services Information Technology Group (CSSITG) knew that, with the ever-increasing demand for web-based digital media content, it would need to either develop or purchase a software solution to automate its e-learning recording and uploading procedures.

“We needed an automatic, centrally managed solution that could capture multiple content sources, perform the encoding process and deliver rich digital video lecture content to the web,” explains David Aldrich, CSSITG Manager at the University of Washington’s Seattle campus.

But, capturing high-resolution presentation material from multiple input sources was a challenge that various expensive scan converters proved unable to handle.

“After experimenting with scan converters, we realized that we needed a compact, reasonably-priced external VGA signal grabber capable of capturing output from a variety of VGA sources,” recalls Aldrich.

The university found a solution in Epiphan’s VGA2USB frame grabber solution.

“Today, the most important component of our video capture system is VGA2USB,” says Aldrich. “We now capture the VGA signal sent from the presenter’s computer to the classroom data projector using Epiphan’s VGA2USB. Epiphan’s VGA2USB solution gives us the high-resolution JPEG images our automated screencasting system needs to meet the expectations of our audience.”
]]> General http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/6816 Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:43:28 -0700 Classroom Support Services IP-Based 'Coursecasting' Initiative Featured on campustechnology.com http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/6223 http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/6223 5/23/2007

By David Nagel

The University of Washington, in an effort to improve access to classroom materials for students, has deployed IP-based audio encoding devices throughout 24 classrooms, standardizing on Barix Instreamers.

The implementation is part of a pilot program through U Washington's Coursecasting initiative, headed up by the university's Classroom Support Services. The 24 classrooms, in 13 campus buildings, have been equipped with one Interstreamer each in the projection booth at the back of each classroom. The Instreamer's line input is connected to the audio output of the PA systems in the classes. Audio is recorded and encoded, at which point the Instreamers connect through the campus network to Classroom Support Services' central capture server, which processes the audio and uploads it to an archive on one of the university's portal pages. The portal provides access to the recordings (encoded at lowest quality to keep file sizes small) via RSS.

The complete article can be seen here: www.campustechnology.com]]> General http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/6223 Fri, 25 May 2007 11:01:48 -0700 Automated Video Screen Capture System http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/5939 http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/5939 Classroom Portal. Students can view lectures using operating-system agnostic flash media-player software and they can skip ahead in each lecture with pre-made Bookmarks.

In October 2005, Classroom Support Services started an on-demand video pilot. 17 classes have participated in the on-demand video pilot between October 2005 and March 2007, resulting in 47,684 downloads. The IT Group surveyed students at the end of Winter Quarter (2007) and based on this feedback, further developed their on-demand video technology to create an automated ScreenCasting system that combines high resolution video screen captures, traditional video recordings and spoken narration. The result is an end-product that conveys complex information and concepts easily and quickly.

If you are interested in seeing a sample of a screencast, UW Oceanography Professor Richard Strickland's Sloan-C Conference Presentation on podcasting is available on-line.

]]> General http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/5939 Fri, 20 Apr 2007 16:40:00 -0700 New Online Series Request Form http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/5407 http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/5407 Instructors may now make their request by completing the following online form.
]]> General http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/5407 Mon, 12 Mar 2007 09:44:04 -0700 Classroom Support Services Expands Podcasting Pilot -- Ten More Rooms Podcast-Ready for Winter Quarter http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2646 http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2646 course-casting page.

Instructors teaching in any of the following rooms can request the podcasting service for their class:

  • BAG 131, 154;
  • CMU 120;
  • EEB 105, 125;
  • GWN 201, 301;
  • HS D209;
  • HS T629;
  • HUB 112;
  • JHN 075, 102, 175;
  • KNE 110, 120, 130, 210, 220;
  • MGH 231, 389,
  • PAA A102; A118;
  • SMI 120;

Please fill out the Podcast Request Form if you are interested.]]> General http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2646 Fri, 22 Dec 2006 11:42:56 -0800 Automated Podcast Solution White Paper http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2645 http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2645
"Automated Podcasting Solution Expands the Boundaries of the Classroom" was presented Monday by David Cox in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada at the University and College Computing Services (SIGUCCS) 2006 Fall Conference. The paper reviews design considerations for a university podcast solution and also includes a high-level look at the University’s final podcasting architecture.

“Podcasting has been one of the simplest teaching and learning technologies to implement at the University of Washington,” according to David Aldrich, one of the paper's authors, “and one of the most immediately adopted by students who are engaged in the learning process.”

http://www.css.washington.edu/w/images/1/14/Automated_Podcasting_Solution.pdf ]]> General http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2645 Mon, 9 Oct 2006 14:29:00 -0700 Job Openings http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2643 http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2643 Application and submit it to our office.]]> General http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2643 Thu, 10 Aug 2006 10:15:00 -0700 Podcasts a big hit at local colleges http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2644 http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2644
"Last fall, the UW was the first college in the state to formally offer podcasts — audio recordings posted online that can be downloaded to computers, iPods and other MP3 players — and the trend is spreading, officials say, because it meshes with students' busy, tech-savvy lives."

Read the article here]]> General http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2644 Thu, 6 Apr 2006 13:59:00 -0700 Classroom Portal http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2642 http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2642
Click here to view the Classroom Portal]]> General http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2642 Tue, 20 Dec 2005 14:48:00 -0800 UW's downloadable lectures have iPods playing a new tune http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2640 http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2640
"This quarter, oceanography instructor Richard Strickland and two other UW lecturers are offering podcasts -- allowing students to subscribe to the classroom sessions on their computer and transfer them to a portable listening device."

Read the complete article.



]]> General http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2640 Mon, 31 Oct 2005 11:59:00 -0800 Students get class lectures on demand, thanks to podcasts http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2641 http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2641
Lectures in Kane have often been videotaped for student viewing, but that means the student must go to the library to check out the video and view it there. With podcasts the audio portion of the lecture can be downloaded to a personal listening device such as an iPod and listened to anywhere. Moreover, the new technology allows students to subscribe to lectures and have them automatically downloaded to their computers. "

Read the University Week Article
]]> General http://www.css.washington.edu/news/item/2641 Thu, 20 Oct 2005 12:30:00 -0700