In order to evaluate the effectiveness of Classroom 2000 technology, we have to have some guarantee that it is being used. Students and teachers all need to be able to access the products of post-production. Since students have access to a variety of platforms both in university labs, offices and homes, cross-platform support is critical. This cross-platform issue has not been addressed by other researchers working in this area because either they have been able to control the computing environment of the users or the users had a limited computing platform. The emergence of the Web has made it possible to realize a limited cross-platform distribution for some media types. Students noted that access to the Web notes was easy, the only problem being some delays over traditional phone connections. Unfortunately, at the time we were beginning development of our prototypes this cross-platform support did not include streaming, indexable audio. We built our own UNIX-based audio service, including a client player and central server. This worked extremely well on laboratory workstations, but was virtually inaccessible to students working at home using non-UNIX platforms. As a result, we had relatively limited use of the audio. Again, we are fortunate that cross-platform support for indexed streaming audio is now commercially available; we are transitioning away from our own tools for that service.
Future Computing Environments