Apple technology is used in the iLectures system created by the Arts Multimedia Centre at the University of Western Australia. It automatically records audio and/or video of lectures and “zaps” each lecture recording up on the Web within an hour or so of the end of each lecture — without human intervention.
The iLectures system is currently capturing over 300 lectures per week and getting over 3,000 hits per week on those lecture recordings. Students can access the recordings 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The iLecture system was developed by a team in the Arts Multimedia Centre at the University of Western Australia. However, it’s currently being used at other Australian universities.
Multimedia consultant Martin Hill is coordinating the installation of iLectures at Curtin University in Western Australia. There are already several examples of lectures, seminars, and conferences captured by the system online. There’s even a Mac OS X seminar delivered on campus by one of Apple Australia’s System Engineers.
“It’s a great system that uses Mac OS X systems as the back-end and either a Mac G4 or Wintel PC in each lecture venue to do the capturing,” Hill told MacCentral. “QuickTime is the preferred delivery medium, but the system also supports Windows Media and Real Player.”
The iLecture team has also created a Web-based tool for lecturers themselves to call up their own lecture recordings and synchronize PowerPoint slides and URLs, add chapter tracks, and more, all without having to be technically advanced.
“It’s all a very impressive use of Apple’s Quicktime architecture, Applescript and Java,” Hill said.