Schooled in Streaming

SCC has been able to capitalize on the Seattle’s high-tech resources. "We have more outbound bandwidth than any community college in the country," says Davis, explaining that this is partly due to SCC’s being "part of the city of Seattle fiber ring." Another advantage for SCC is its access to Internet2, obtained through its partnership with the University of Washington.

Private-Sector Partnerships
About five years ago Davis and his staff looked at the bandwidth available to them, decided it gave them a great foundation upon which to build their own streaming media system, and began to build IRIS from the ground up. Four primary industry partners—Microsoft, Hitachi Data Systems, Dell, and Cisco Systems—contributed software, hardware, consulting, and even some cash.

"These resources allowed us to build IRIS at very low cost," says Davis. "Most colleges do not have the resources to add video streaming, downloads, and interactive classes and training at commercial rates. Using IRIS gives them the ability to offer these services to their students and their communities. This allows them access to media and bandwidth that they don’t have themselves, and at prices they can afford. That’s the other part of our mission—to do this at costs that education can afford."

Getting IRIS off the ground was a huge challenge, says Davis, but SCC’s big-name partners made it easier than it might have been. "We learned quickly with the aid of our primary partners," says Davis. "They contributed the expertise, hardware, software, and consulting necessary to help build and fund our system. Since then we’ve also partnered with ViewCast, EEG, Magni Systems, Adhost, Princeton Server Group, and Adobe." Not surprisingly, given the proximity of its Redmond headquarters, Microsoft has been the biggest supporter of SCC’s initiatives, and SCC uses Windows Media exclusively.

"SCC-TV/IRIS is a financially self-sustaining operation," says Davis. "We receive no funding from our college district or the State of Washington. Laughingly we say, ‘We eat what we kill.’ Our educational and training services, plus some grants and sponsorships, pay for our operations. Our operational costs run about $900,000 per year, most of which are salaries."

Multiple Use Scenarios
SCC-TV/IRIS offers live streaming, VOD streaming and downloads, portal development, interactive web classes and training development, ecommerce delivery, and a host of services tailored to the specific needs of its client schools and organizations.

In Seattle, all three SCC branches have distance learning departments that use popular elearning tools such as webCT and Blackboard. In the past, those departments’ courses were largely text-based, but SCC-TV/IRIS now creates plenty of video and audio components for them.

Besides bringing distance-learning capabilities to Seattle Community Colleges, IRIS is also bringing communications capabilities. "All the Seattle Community College personnel can access our streaming services from inside our WAN and outside," says Davis. "Also, our chancellor and presidents communicate within our network regularly by secured streamed video conferencing."

Of course, not everyone is sold on the benefits of elearning versus traditional classroom learning. But most of the faculty at Seattle Community Colleges has shown great interest. "A group of our faculty love elearning," says Davis. "They thrive on using technology to deliver education and training. They believe elearning is equal to or better than in-class learning especially among visual learners. And they cite elearning’s ability to increase participation among students."

Of course, even the gung-ho realize that elearning isn’t perfect for every task. "In some cases, elearning needs an in-class or in-lab component, depending on the class content," says Davis. Classroom learning is not in danger of disappearing any time soon, says Davis.When Davis looks at the future he sees audio and video podcasting, as well as "outreach projects" like SCC-TV’s streaming media classes, which are taught by industry leaders like Steve Mack and Dan Rayburn and are available at www.streamingmediaclasses.com. And then there’s Rainier Radio, an internet radio station whose mission it is to archive the history of Seattle’s vibrant local music scene as well as provide a teaching environment on the central SCC campus.

As for IRIS? "We’re working now on improving our download capabilities, developing effective DRM, and expanding our distribution network with edge sites throughout the country," says Davis. "We’d like to become the Akamai of education".

Sandia National Laboratories
Founded in 1949, Sandia National Laboratories is a government-owned, contractor-operated, multi-program lab that conducts defense R&D, energy, and environmental projects. Managed by Lockheed Martin for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, it employs 8,500 people and manages $2.3 billion worth of projects annually. The main Sandia campus is on Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but it has another campus in Livermore, California, a rocket-launching range in Hawaii, and facilities or offices in four other cities. Sandia actively promotes and funds continuing education for its employees, including advanced degree programs. Recently, Sandia has begun to offer its employees various types of streamed elearning through its Distance Learning Program.

The types of training run the gamut from environmental health and safety all the way up to microbiology courses, says Rogulja Wolf, video streaming system development/content manager for Sandia. "Our streaming efforts began in 2002 with a proof-of-concept effort to research how this technology would augment all types of communications and how it would function within our existing infrastructure," says Wolf. "It was about a year before we fielded a production-level system."

The organization’s streaming efforts began with project management communications and collaboration, but soon moved into instructional delivery. Sandia was already bringing in outside university courses via satellite feed, but Wolf soon saw streaming as a more cost-effective and convenient approach.

As Sandia did more and more streaming, Wolf and his staff started to get concerned about management issues. "We began to realize the enormity of the asset management aspect of streaming," says Wolf. "As we acquired more and more video assets that people wanted to have around, they started looking at our streaming library as an archive. And once a bit of information was in the library, people expected it to always be there." Ultimately, Sandia chose Sonic Foundry’s Mediasite as its core system.

Mediasite is not strictly an asset management tool, but that’s okay, says Wolf. "Mediasite incorporates most of the elements that we felt we needed in order to have a truly functional and manageable streaming system on the enterprise level." Among the Mediasite features that appealed to Sandia were access control and security measures, VGA capture and delivery without high bandwidth requirements, and an integrated content management system that incorporates PowerPoint slides and other graphics as part of the stream. Plus, it’s Windows Media-based, which meant it would be compatible with Sandia’s Microsoft computing environment.

Wolf claims to be &#