Multiple Communication Streams

Typically one week a month I fly from California to Wisconsin to meet with our consultants and clients. This week was one of those weeks. One of the things that really stood out this week was the whole concept of communication and all of the multiple forms in which it can occur and how new advances in technology can facilitate this.

On Tuesday, I did a video conference for school principals on how to collect walk-through data in their schools on how technology is being used to enhance teaching and learning. We used Mediasite to stream the meeting to multiple sites. Participants were able to see me on one part of the screen and what was on my screen (i.e. PowerPoints, documents) on the other side. Mediasite also allows you to achieve the meeting, which is nice for administrators who couldn't make the meeting or want to review how to score the walk-through data. Because the other sites did not have microphones, in order to encourage two-way communication we used skype both for voice and for chat. Skype allowed me to keep tabs on how each of the sites was doing, answer participant questions, and keep it interactive.

On Wednesday, I did a presentation for the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) E-Learning SIG Meeting on how Second Life is being used for training in organizations. As part of the presentation, I had a panel of speakers who from different parts of the country who joined me in Second Life to interact with the audience and answer questions. We were able to use the Voice over IP capabilities in Second Life as well as their real time chat feature. I believe that technologies such as Mediasite, Skype and Second Life are going to hit a tipping point in education and the workplace in the next five years because they allow people to cross time and space and meet together.

Some of the participants of the Second Life session invited me to attend the Art of ASL Festival (American Sign Language (ASL) at the Milwaukee Art Museum yesterday. I learned a lot about ASL and new technologies that are being developed around ASL. Jolanta Lapiak, an Ameslan literary artist, media poet, and textual catalyst talked about how ASL is about movement.

I also attended a session by Jason Hurdich, the team leader of Vcom3D Inc.’s Sign Language Division. Vcom3D specializes in creating multi-cultural, context sensitive, avatars for enhanced learning. Avitars communicate through body language (including gesture or sign language), facial expression and lip-synched speech. Their products are used in schools, families, corporations and government agencies in the areas of culture/language familiarization, training, and educational mentoring.
Jason showed us SignSmith Studio . This application allows you to type in text and the avatar will translate this into sign language. Jason explained that up until now most of the ASL resources were 2-D (printed materials) and how much more powerful it is to communicate 3-D as the language was created to be used. He also demonstrated how easy it was to make a change, just by swapping out the text. However, if you were producing a video of someone signing live it would be a lot of work to edit out a word and change it to something else. Another thing that I learned is the importance of facial gestures in ASL. This is referred to as “facial grammar”. When designing these avitars Vcom3D designers have to manipulate 2,500 polygons to get the facial gestures just right. There are even subtle differences in how a woman signs vs. a man and Vcom3D is also working on incorporating these differences into their avatar designs as well. I was amazed at how the addition of facial gestures and slight movements such as leaning back and forth slightly made the avitars much more life-like than the avitars in Second Life. The signing avitars can also be downloaded to iPods and touchtone phones like the iPhone so people can take them anywhere anytime.