NASA launches live Internet webcasts worldwide

By John Bluck and Pat Kaspar

Left-to-right: Justin Messer (sitting), Ames Research Center's Learning Technologies Project Manager Mark Leon, Vice President All Gore and Sara Murphy participate in Net Day on Wednesday, Oct. 25. Leon explains to Gore how NASA will help meet the Vice President's goal to put all the nation's school systems online.

By early 1999, students at 5,000 schools will be able to talk directly to shuttle astronauts via NASA's Learning Technologies Project (LTP) channel.

"We already have 300 audio connections," said LTP Manager Mark León of NASA Ames Research Center (ARC), Moffett Field, Calif. "We want to reach 5,000 schools over the next 14 months."

Combining broadcasting with the Internet, NASA recently started the Learning Technologies Channel that transmits live audio and video from ARC and other locations through the web to a worldwide Internet audience. LTP is part of a larger government effort, the High-Performance Computing and Communication (HPCC) program.

"The Learning Technologies Channel lets educators and the general public participate in courses, workshops, seminars and other events that might otherwise be unavailable to them without leaving their schools or homes," said Karen Traicoff, Quest project manager at ARC. The channel originates from ARC and is a service of the Quest Project, which is providing many NASA educational websites supported by NASA's Learning Technologies Project.

"The main focus of the channel is to provide training to educators wherever they are located. Many teach at rural schools just now connecting to the Internet," said Andrea McCurdy, Learning Technologies Channel project manager. "We also do all kinds of fun things for kids and the general public."

For example, a special one-hour program about going to Mars was broadcast, or webcast. Educators asked questions and shared their thoughts through computer chat sessions during the broadcast.

Distributed audio network

The Learning Technology Channel's effort to use audio to reach 5,000 schools is an ongoing job. It depends on the continuing construction of a distributed digital audio network. That system will link the schools, enabling Internet-based teacher and student training.

The work of creating an underlying audio base is proceeding in phases. The first step is to provide the technology for physical audio connections. "We chose RealAudio software because it is free," said León. Demonstrated to Vice President Al Gore last October, this technology is available to schools at no cost. Schools with an Internet connection of at least 28.8 thousand (28.8K) bytes per second will be eligible to participate in the testbed. The next step is to select knowledgeable participants for each school. These Learning Technologies Advocates will receive technology and disseminate it to many urban, non-urban and minority locations. Finally, the Learning Technologies Channel will provide educational programs and material via the network.

LTP's effort to create more learning alternatives on the Internet stimulates further education. "At present we have two transmitting super sites: ARC and the Classroom of the Future at the Wheeling Jesuit College, W.Va.," León said."Eventually the network will fan out from 10 NASA centers and significantly increase the number of channels available to the general public."

"The new service works best for those with fast computers and fast Internet connections," said Marc Siegel, Quest team manager at ARC. The Internet channel enables users to feel they are part of each event by receiving information seamlessly, through the use of graphics, audio, video and transcriptions of the audio.

Students and teachers view digitized video and audio from the Learning Technologies Channel. Chat windows on their computer screens permit students to submit questions that are answered during the webcasts. For some programs, a text transcription is generated to allow users with slow data services to participate. Web archives provide more information.

One of the first programs included broadcast of live sound from a submarine that was exploring the ocean floor at a depth of 750 ft., where human beings have never been before. Near Channel Islands National Park, off the southern California coast, a ranger gave a first-hand account of what she saw from the submarine. Two other initial webcasts featured a question-and-answer session with a Mars expert and a virtual tour of NASA's practice space station located at Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas.

For more information, see the Learning Technologies Channel's web page.