ITV classes experience problems

Adam Madison

Staff Writer

According to Peggy Himbert, senior staff secretary for the Extended Education department on campus, The ITV (interactive television) classes on campus have been experiencing a few hiccups lately. ITV is an interactive video course offered to extended education students off campus. A video camera records the teacher and his class live, while the lesson is broadcast to another ITV classroom. The ITV locations in Burney, Hoopa, Fall River and Weaverville each have a receiving classroom and a teaching classroom where the live audio and video is sent out. How it’s supposed to work is one teachers lesson is broadcast interactively to outside students who would have a difficult time making it all the way to the Shasta College campus.

The system used to go through the ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) before it switched to an IP (Internet Protocol) address two years ago. In man-on-the-street terms, it used to be through regular phone lines, then switched to a faster, more reliable T1 line. After the change, the kinks in the network needed to be worked out.

In the first few weeks of ITV courses this semester, the entire connection would be lost and some students could not receive their lesson for the day. Supervisor of Technical Support, John Lutkemeir and his team had most of the dropped connections resolved. Lutkemeir said the main problem is not with the college’s network, but the route the data has to take to get to outside locations. Some areas such as Weaverville, the audio/video feed has to go through three different phone and internet providers just to get there.

For the students it means if one of the telephone services on the way to Weaverville is down, they won’t get their lesson. The technical support for the program can’t control or fix what happens at the other network providers such as AT&T Corp., one of the carriers on the way to Weaverville. Himbert cited an accident that occurred last year in Red Bluff, when a backhoe knocked out AT&T, completely stopping Red Bluff ITV classes.

Recently the students are having trouble with the delay in audio, and some classes aren’t receiving video and only sound. The broadcast, although live is still a second or so behind real time.

The students have to wait longer for response, such as roll call or if students have questions. Any cellular device needs to be turned completely off, because they interfere with the speakers.

Some of the problems according to Himbert and Lutkemeir are just basic setup problems and human error. Sometimes a TV may not be turned on, or a microphone is too close to a speaker, which creates echo.

The problems become more complicated, such as the software for the video and audio transmission not working properly or problems within the network on campus. The last problem is with outside carrier such as Frontier and AT&T who experience problems that the technical staff here can’t help or control.

Just like any relatively new technology, it’s not perfected yet. Lutkemeir and his staff are working on a design for a network that would be completely separate of the rest of the online services at the college.

His idea is that if the ITV is on it’s own network, specifically the audio/video data, our ITV students and teachers would not have to worry about the outside carriers for the lesson. If there were any problems Lutkemeir and his staff would be able to work on them at the college, without having to contact local telephone providers.

Himbert said the technical support staff was very timely in servicing the problems they could control. One of the video feeds for Hoopa was having trouble with their video feed during the interview.

One of the technical support staff had the problem solved while class was in session. The ITV program is helping out students in the surrounding counties and is a valuable asset to Shasta College. Hopefully for the students, the bumps will be smoothed out before the semester is over.