ERIC Number: EJ1095119
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2008
Pages: 22
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1539-3100
EISSN: N/A
Multipoint Multimedia Conferencing System with Group Awareness Support and Remote Management
Osawa, Noritaka; Asai, Kikuo
International Journal of Distance Education Technologies, v6 n3 p23-44 Jul-Sep 2008
A multipoint, multimedia conferencing system called FocusShare is described that uses IPv6/IPv4 multicasting for real-time collaboration, enabling video, audio, and group awareness information to be shared. Multiple telepointers provide group awareness information and make it easy to share attention and intention. In addition to pointing with the telepointers, users can add graphical annotations to video streams and share them with one another. The system also supports attention-sharing using video processing techniques. FocusShare is a modularly designed suite consisting of several simple tools, along with tools for remotely controlling them. The modular design enables the system to be easily adapted to various situations entailing different numbers of displays with different resolutions at multiple sites. The remote control tools enable the chairperson or conference organizer to simultaneously change the settings for a set of tools distributed at multiple sites. Evaluation showed that the implemented attention-sharing techniques are useful; FocusShare was more positively evaluated than conventional video conferencing.
Descriptors: Multimedia Materials, Videoconferencing, Teleconferencing, Computer Mediated Communication, Information Dissemination, Shared Resources and Services, Computer Interfaces, Cooperative Learning, Design, Usability, Program Evaluation, Video Technology, Scaling, Hypermedia, Computer Graphics
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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