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Faculty here at UCLA have been working on several innovative projects (using several equally innovative software tools) that combine the use of digital video and the web.

Following the September 11th attack, UCLA's School of Medicine, in conjunction with Microsoft Corporation and L3I Interface Technologies, created an interactive website entitled "What You Need to Know: Bioterrorism and Chemical Warfare." What makes it "interactive" is that the user is permitted to branch off during the playing of the primary video to access additional information on the subject at hand, much as a reader would using footnoted text. Thus, while a video plays a segment dealing with Anthrax, for example, a secondary window will appear with specific information about how the cells reproduce. The reader can click on the small, secondary reader, read or listen to the information presented, then return to the main video and resume viewing the streamed lecture or video. The software behind this application, created by L3I, can be used by faculty to create customized courseware of their own (it can be either be streamed or housed on a CD). More importantly, it can be created by a novice instructor with a minimum of training and support.

Dr. Eric Savitsky, one of several School of Medicine faculty who worked on the project, will discuss how the videos were created and the website was made. Demo'ing the L3I software itself will by Paul Hill, Vice President of Product Development for L3I Interface Technologies.

Another intriguing project is underway at GSEIS's Center X. There Dr. Jody Priselac is heading up a team of educators working with California's K12 Math teachers to help improve teaching techniques and methods. Part of their training involves viewing streaming videos of authentic classroom behavior. Then, using a software environment created by LessonLab (a product developed in part, by UCLA faculty), instructors are logging on the web, viewing video, then commenting online on a message board especially designed to reference precise moments in the video flow. This ability to reference specific moments in video streams could have applications in a range of subject disciplines from anthropology to zoology.

In our forum, the Mathematics Project will be discussed by Dr. Jody Priselac, Executive Director of the UCLA Mathematics Project at Center X, and the software will be demo'ed by Mitch Gordon, Vice President of LessonLab.