| Abstract | Since 1996, the Virtual Classroom program has helped schools across Canada run numerous videoconferencing events, mostly in the form of extracurricular activities. While videoconferencing can be fairly limited in its pedagogical impact if used simply as a window for viewing talking heads, the Virtual Classroom program is designed to promote a student-centered approach by focusing on problem-solving, discussion, and cooperation between students in an enriched environment filled with domain experts. During an academic year, an average of four to six classrooms participating in the program engage in a series of three-hour thematic sessions. In 2007, the program was faced with the challenge of organizing a collaborative, three-hour session with over 500 students in six high schools across Canada (St. John’s, Newfoundland; Edmonton, Alberta; Toronto, Ontario; Fredericton, New Brunswick; and two in Ottawa, Ontario). The objective was to provide the visual communication technology to support high levels of interactivity and engagement, but the videoconferencing equipment typically deployed for these events is limited in terms of group interaction. Given the limitation of traditional tools, the Virtual Classroom program needed a solution driven by a one-step, record-andpublish model that could complement the synchronous communication offered by videoconferencing. This article presents an overview of the Broadband Virtual Camera (BVCam) system, which enables one-step videoconference recording by using idle desktop computers on a network. |
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