Remote Training Broadcasting System   ( RTBS )

          Requirement for remote teaching:

     Advancement of technology particularly in digital media allows us to better archive and distribute rich contents of learning material in real time. Any kind of lecture or demonstration is interest to wide audience. Similarly, recent advancement of broadband network created new needs. Faster thicker broadband now allows us to better utilize remote resources, but it created new needs on training for how to use them. This is especially true to any kind of complex system to perform complex jobs. As a TeraGrid resource provider, what is particularly applies to us is needs to give trainings to remote users. Being able to also view about topics visually is particularly useful. This is especially true when one need to show how to operate something visually rather than by command-line interface. Remote training infrastructure would also allow ways to have synchronous remote sessions.

     Remote training infrastructure at TACC is created especially to support learning experience of TeraGrid users. The broadcaster kit is composed of one OSX laptop node, one WinXP tablet PC, and possibly guest nodes within the same intra-net behind a router(NAT). tablet PC and guest nodes will send desktop capture to the OSX node over intra-net. The OSX node equipped with a camera will compose multiple video source (MUX) along audio from lecturer's and ambient microphone, and send out encoded video over to web casting server where participants and proxy web casting server will connect to view real-time lectures. The video stream is also simultaneously recorded for later podcasting or streaming from media archive server.

     The system is portable enough that it can broadcast lectures from anywhere that has decent internet connection via TACC's web server.


reference:

       data flow diagram