What is Videoconferencing ?
Synonymies: Connected Learning, Curriculum Videoconferencing, Cyber Schools, Distance Education, Distance Learning, Distributed Learning, eLearning (e-learning), Electronic Encounter, Electronic Field Trip (eFieldTrip, EFT), Interactive Distance Learning (IDL), Interactive Instructional Video (IIV), Interactive Videoconference (IV, IVC), Internet Videocommunications, Live Interactive Video Experience, Picture Telephone, Televideo Conference, Tele-Visual-Course, Video Communications, Videoconference (VC, VeeCee, Vidcon, Vidconf, Videoconf), Videoconference over IP (VCoIP), Video TV (VTV), Video-telephone, Video Teleconference (VTC), Video Telepresence, Video Teletraining, Videonet (Vidnet), Videophone, Virtual Classrooms, Virtual Field Trip (VFT)
Conducting a conference between two or more participants at different sites by using computer networks to transmit audio and video data. For example, a point-to-point (two-person) video conferencing system works much like a video telephone. Each participant has a video camera, microphone, and speakers mounted on his or her computer. As the two participants speak to one another, their voices are carried over the network and delivered to the other’s speakers, and whatever images appear in front of the video camera appear in a window on the other participant’s monitor.
Videoconferencing in its most basic form is the transmission of synchronized image (video) and speech (audio) back and forth between two or more physically separate locations, simulating an exchange as if the participants were in the same physical conversation. This is accomplished through the use of cameras (to capture and send video from your local endpoint), video displays (to display video received from remote endpoints), microphones (to capture and send audio from your local endpoint), and speakers (to play audio received from remote endpoints). Although there are many factors that serve to modify or increase the complexity of this basic definition, several of which are discussed in this cookbook, it is useful to keep the concept simple in the beginning when deciding why or how you may be able to use videoconferencing for yourself or your organization. In understanding the role that videoconferencing could play, consider two general situations: 1) those where you are already able
Videoconferencing is a real time connection between two or more physical locations that is composed of both audio and video components. In most cases, the typical videoconference will allow full interaction between the locations. The interactive telecommunications of the videoteleconference have improved a great deal since the earliest attempts to combine voice and video into a workable business tool in the 1970’s. Like any type of audio teleconferencing, videoconferencing requires technologies that help to create a bridge between the locations involved in the meeting. The network used to conduct the conference may be a private network, such as a series of videoconferencing stations set up in conference rooms at each location of a given company. When this is the case, the bridging equipment often resides at the corporate headquarters, with connecting hubs and stations placed at each branch location of the company. Alternatively, the corporation may purchase and install the stations but
