I, along with Alex Katsaros (who will also be at this THATCamp) have worked on a project which uses a satellite uplink to webcast class material back from (in our case) South Africa. I taught a course last term, African Humanities (and a colleague, Rosalyn Howard, taught an Anthropology in Africa course at the same time) that used these feeds. We were both in South Africa with a team that included Alex (who headed up the development of a teacher’s tablet that we used, and also did mixing in the field) and others.

This is maybe a bit different than most digital projects here, but I’d be interested in talking about new widgets and capabilities for this kind of setup. What distinguishes it is that it is mobile, remote, interactive, and real-time. Students can webcam in to us while we’re there, and we can put the feed into the broadcast. They can talk to who we are talking to, and we can do that from anywhere we can get a satellite connection (so, middle of a desert, if necessary). And, the participants don’t all have to be in one place – as long as they have a browser, broadband, and webcam equipment, they’re in.

So, this has potential in any situation of knowledge transfer, and that’s what I want to talk about.