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 ttracting
more than a sparse audience to its budget talks is tough for the
Penn Manor School Board in south-central Pennsylvania. Advertising
the meetings is a waste of money. And holding a series of meetings
at opposite ends of this sprawling district doesn't seem to work
either -- few people show up.
But rural Penn Manor hopes its recent foray into the world of
webcasting was a turning point. In May 2000, the school board
aired preliminary budget talks live over the Internet, drawing
about 100 viewers. Although the number of viewers gradually dropped
after the first 20 minutes, the response thrilled the district.
Parents and others clicked on specific pages in the budget for
reference, and toward the end of the broadcast, a handful of people
e-mailed questions for district staff members to answer.
"We seem to be becoming a society [in which] people would just
much rather flick a switch than go out," says Willis Herr, president
of the Penn
Manor School Board, which oversees the 5,300-student district.
"This is a great tool, and it can only grow in the future as word
gets out about it."
Lights, camera, action
Webcasting is a combination of software, telecommunications,
and broadcasting that is still a technological novelty in education
circles. Created primarily for entertainment use five years ago
by Seattle-based RealNetworks, webcasting quickly caught on with
all sorts of businesses, local governments, and media outlets.
But school districts have been slow to pick up on the trend, partly
because they still need to wire classrooms and learn to make effective
use of the technology they already have. Indeed, a quick sampling
of several districts around the country revealed that many school
board members have never even heard of webcasting.
But the school boards that are experimenting with webcasting
see its potential for involving more of the community in the decisions
they make. People can come home tired after work and catch a controversial
debate listed last on the board's agenda without sitting through
hours of discussions on other topics. They can cook dinner while
they watch, or take a quick break to tuck the children into bed.
Best of all, they can learn that school board policies aren't
crafted in a vacuum.
"Anything that opens up these meetings to the general public
is good," says Joe Newlin of the National Rural Education Association,
which is housed at Colorado State University. Newlin notes that
this technological breakthrough is particularly beneficial for
rural residents, who are accustomed to traveling up to 50 miles
to attend school board meetings.
Because webcasts are usually electronically archived, they can
be viewed wholly or piecemeal days, weeks, even months after a
meeting is held. Concerned constituents -- and school board members
-- can return to archived meetings to double-check what somebody
said or how the board voted. (Penn Manor's meetings are archived.
"I use [the webcast] to verify what we said," says Tom Shafer,
president of the Monroe County Community School Board in Bloomington,
Ind. "What really was in that motion? If that ever arises as a
question, I'm not afraid to go back and find out."
Cyber congestion, jerky footage
Monroe County's board meetings air live on the Internet through
an unusual partnership. Community Access Television Services,
a department of the regional public library, cablecasts the meetings,
while a local nonprofit organization transforms the television
signal into a format suitable for Internet viewing. The public
downloads a free program called RealPlayer invented by RealNetworks
to access the signal.
The cable channel's web site also hosts meetings of the city
council, planning commission, and library board. But an overload
of webcasting can cause problems. In Bloomington's case, it meant
there was room this fall only for one archived school board session
and five-minute, prerecorded campaign speeches from nine of this
year's 14 school board candidates.
What's more, the audiovisual quality of webcasts varies widely.
Footage can be jerky -- Shafer likens some of it to a badly dubbed
foreign film -- and can freeze from congestion if too many people
try to watch simultaneously. Lingerie retailer Victoria's Secret
realized such limitations last year when it webcast a fashion
show and nearly twice the number of expected viewers logged on
to watch. The footage was unusually slow for many; others were
unable to connect to the site.
Still, when webcasting is done well, images can be as clear
as if they are on a color television screen. Michael White, director
of the Bloomington cable channel, recalls watching a webcast of
a meeting of his coworkers back home while he was vacationing
in Hawaii. "One of them was drinking a Diet 7UP," he says. "The
resolution was so good, I could see that." Then again, he might
have been the only one watching, which would explain the quality
of the video.
Even so, industry experts say the resolution will improve with
new technological advances. In several news articles about webcasting,
experts predicted the burgeoning technology will someday be as
ubiquitous as radios and televisions are today.
A hefty price tag
Lofty predictions about the spread of webcasting are somewhat
offset, however, by the reality that doing this is not easy --
nor is it cheap.
Industry experts say the cost to launch and maintain webcasts
depends on the length of the event, the number of people tuning
in, whether an outside company uses its own Internet site for
the broadcast, and numerous other factors. The price tag could
come to hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
For example, at SRT Enterprises, a Pennsylvania-based company
that helps school systems with webcasting, prices start at $957
for a two-hour meeting without a lot of physical movement among
the people being filmed (in other words, mostly talking heads),
according to Syed Karimushan, an SRT systems administrator. That
price is on top of equipment costs that start around $4,500. And
it buys a webcast that a maximum of only 25 viewers could log
onto simultaneously.
School boards that want to use the service more than two times
a month could opt to own space on a selected Internet site for
$2,570 per month. That would allow for 24-hour, seven-day-a-week
access, although no more than 25 viewers could participate at
the same time.
The good news, in both scenarios, is that any number of people
could watch at any hour once the footage is archived.
The staffing problem
The Penn Manor district secured equipment donations -- including
computers, cameras, and software called QuickTime Streaming --
from Apple Computer Corp. and a local business for its inaugural
webcast. Administrators did the same in June for the high school
graduation. Triple the number of viewers logged on for graduation
ceremonies, some from as far away as Mexico and Bosnia.
For a small district such as Penn Manor, doing this without
equipment donations would be difficult. Charlie Reisinger, the
school district's director of technology, says that Penn Manor
would have had to spend about $8,000 initially on its own equipment
to webcast school board meetings and graduation ceremonies regularly.
That's not much money for a bigger district, but for a small rural
system like Penn Manor, it's a sizable chunk of cash. Districts
can cut costs if they already have some of the necessary equipment.
A potentially bigger issue than money, however, is having the
staff to produce a webcast.
Students in a multimedia class in Pennsylvania's West Branch
Area School District launched their first webcast -- of a junior-high
basketball game -- three years ago as a class project. But efforts
to do the same for school board meetings were short-lived: A couple
of meetings aired two years ago, but just one last year, and there
are no plans to air any this year.
"It became tough for the kids to do," says Ronald Matchock,
technology coordinator for the 1,300-student district. "They had
to spend an hour setting up the equipment, sit through an entire
meeting, and then spend an hour taking it down. It was too cumbersome
for them."
Besides, Matchock says, not all board members were keen on the
idea. Some questioned whether audience participation might actually
drop if people who do not like to be in the media spotlight knew
that their concerns -- or their faces if they were at the meeting
-- would be broadcast worldwide. Others questioned the
legal implications of broadcasting a student's image on the Internet
without a parent's permission. The board never got satisfactory
answers so it shelved webcasting -- at least for now.
Looking back, Matchock says, "The rules weren't real clear.
We struggled with that because no one could tell us what to do.
We talked to schools throughout the state, and they were all doing
things differently."
No substitute
Indeed, even the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Education
Technology has yet to address the issue.
But Linda Roberts, director of the department's education technology
branch, does offer a bit of advice about the role webcasting should
play at school board meetings. While webcasting can be a valuable
tool, she says, school boards should not use it to replace face-to-face
contact with constituents.
"On a cautionary note, they shouldn't assume that just because
they put their meeting on the web, they fulfilled their obligation
of reaching out to the public," Roberts warns. "That's one way
to try to reach the public. But it's not going to be sufficient."
Robin L. Flanigan is a freelance writer who
lives in Rochester, N.Y.
Online Information
• Apple
Computer Corp.
• RealNetworks
• SRT Enterprises
• USA Video
Interactive
• U.S.
Department of EducationOffice of Educational Technology
• International
Webcasting Association
• Webcasting
Technical Information
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