Abstract:

Video lectures from classrooms, conferences, talks and so on, are very useful in order to share knowledge, ideas, lessons, etc. The current tools to share video lectures allow only video plus presentation (with a small social interaction) sharing, i.e. a “static class”. We want to expand this concept in order to include student and teacher interaction, sharing more elements (for example, a file appearing in a given moment of the video), metainformation, etc. In this way, we could use the video lecture to give a “virtual class” using a video lecture from other author, for example.

Nowadays, there are a lot of websites and tools for sharing this kind of information. For example, http://www.videolectures.net is one of the most popular. It allows to share a video together with a presentation (PDF or PowerPoint format) and synchronize both in order to show a given slide in a given instant. It also allows to include additional information, like author information, date of presentation, link to other similar presentations, etc. Other important site is http://parleys.com/ which presents a better interface, but it is still a video plus presentation site, although it includes additional resources, like files (for example, manuals). http://www.infoq.com is another example of site with these features.

In this paper, we present a framework to build, share and visualize a more complex structure, not just a video plus presentation item. We want to use additional useful items. For example, a chat (and social) area, material dropping, additional cameras (student cameras), metainformation (subject, author and talk information, related talks, etc.). The idea is not only to use video lectures like a standalone class, but also use them like a collaborative tool. In this way, we could use video lectures to teach a virtual class.

We divide our tool in two parts. First, an edition tool which allows to synchronize all the elements. This tool will use an open standard format, defined in XML and allows us to create the video lecture. Using a friendly environment, users could define when a slide will appear or a file will be shown, creating finally a “virtual class item”. The other tool is a visualization one, visualizing that virtual class and allowing interaction among teacher and students.

Keywords:

Video lectures.