Managing Materials

Many video conferences include reference to other material, ranging from primary source material such as artefacts to notes of the key points of a lecture.

It is possible to share some material during the conference, by using a document camera for example, but the quality can be less than ideal. Where appropriate it is preferable to distribute material by an alternative method in advance of the conference. This might be by email or on a CD-ROM, but the challenge is being able to properly display the material.

For example if a historian was delivering a video conference to a school on the Domesday Book, high quality scans of pages could be sent out by email to the class teacher in advance of the conference. The school could then set up a second projector, connected to the teacher's laptop, to show these scanned images while the historian talked.

Suitable methods for distributing material in advance of a video conference are:

Email

    • This is useful for the fast transfer of relatively small (>5MB) files.
    • Check that the email filtering software in place will not stop the file.

WWW

    • Placing files on a website makes download of small-medium size files easy.
    • Check that the content filter in use by the target site allows file downloads.

CD/DVD

    • For very large files, including videos, the best method is to put the files on CD or DVD and post them.

In all cases it is sensible as part of the checklist to confirm material has arrived and has been tested. To see our downloadable checklists please click here.

Of course some material, such as actual artefacts, can only be distributed in person. Including real hands-on experience of objects can really help the delivery of teaching in some subjects.

To Learn more about how to share applications in real time in a videoconferencing system click here.