The KMi Stadium project has supported a vast
range of educational webcasting experiments within the Open University
and external clients. The logistics of managing such events from a web
based access point of view has led to the development Stadium Backlot
System.
The Stadium Backlot system facilitates the management
and maintenance of both live web casts and replays. The management
hierarchy allows for the organisation of multiple venues, or event
groupings. In the Open University sample venues range from the Berrill
Lecture Theatre, one of our main large auditoria, to our Sound and
Vision Studios; an example of an event grouping would range from a
course webcast series, to the vice-chancellors open management meetings.
All the audience accessible pages generated by Stadium
Backlot, are defined by header, footer and template files, and it is
therefore relatively easy to change the appearance of any given Stadium.
The content of the dynamically created audience web
pages are based on the time, the viewers location, and who they are.
Consequently, the events list page shows the current status of events
in the system, and viewable by the person from their current location.
The web page listing events at the Berrill Lecture
Theatre.
The web pages presenting a web cast event's details show
the title, date, speakers, venue and description of the event. Prior to
the event this page also contains a downloadable calendar file, and it
refreshes regularly to check to see if the event is ready to go live.
At this point buttons appear on the web page to allow
the audience to enter the event (usually there will be several buttons
to allow the audience to pick a data rate applicable to their internet
connection). After the event the managers of the Backlot system can
enable similar launch buttons for viewing replays of the event.
An example of a title page of an event replay.
The management of Stadium Backlot is via secure web page
access (i.e. username and password system). Editing and adding data to
the system is via web based forms. Managers of the system can have
varying privileges from access right across all Stadium to just
specific tasks within specific Stadium.
An example of the type of detailed management available.
Management tasks include:
Adding new Stadium
Editing Stadium
Adding/Editing Events, including uploading relevant media etc.
Approving Events
Adding/Editing speaker details
Adding/Editing managers
Example Stadiums:
Prolearn-TV -
http://stadium.open.ac.uk/prolearn/
Berrill – http://stadium.open.ac.uk/berrill/
KMi Podium – http://stadium.open.ac.uk/podium/
|
XO Backlot
Webcasting content management system.
XO Stage
QuickTime based replay client for video and slides. There is also a
Flash version of the client in development (see XO Lite).
XO Editor
Companion editing tool to create XO Stage replays.
XO ButtonEd
XO Stage Launch button editor
XO Lite and XO Sync
Forthcoming projects.
|