iLecture was developed by the Information Commons Production Services Team at the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences of the University of Iowa . Basically, iLecture takes a PowerPoint presentation, transforms the slides into .jpg images, records narration from a microphone, and outputs a web-ready lecture. iLecture uses the MP3 Encoder LAME for audio compression. iLecture utilizes SMIL (Simple Multimedia Integration Language), an open standard specification of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) supported by Apple's QuickTime. iLecture outputs content that can be played within any web browser that can view QuickTime formats, which the user can download for free from http://www.apple.com/quicktime/products/qt/. QuickTime is Apple Computer's multi-platform, industry-standard, multimedia software architecture. The output of the program is basically a folder that contains all the image and audio files, a .mov file and an html file. The user can upload the entire folder onto a web server and publish the presentation.
Initial funding for iLecture development was provided by the Innovations in Instructional Technology Award program. The program is directed by Academic Technologies (AT), a department of the University of Iowa's Information Technology Services. Selections of award winners is done by the Academic Technology Advisory Council. A press release announcing the receipt of this award can be found at the News @ Hardin Archive
Current Status of iLecture
iLecture is currently undergoing changes on core areas of the application to a robust tool that's accessable via any platform. This new version, code named iLectureJ, will be written entirely in Java to allow Windows, Mac, and UNIX users the ability to access iLecutre. Furthermore, a variety free and open technologies are being used to power iLectureJ. The PowerML core is being used to convert all Powerpoint presentations into XML files. Future versions will also include the ability to import Apple's Keynote format and OpenOffice.org's Impress format presentations. Apache XMLBeans and Batik API are used to convert these XML slides into a Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). These graphics are then used in iLecture, associated with audio, and finally exported. Currently, the only export option is the original SMIL file, which consists of a raster image associated with audio, but export options in the future may include Flash, PodCast, and raw SVG's.
Project Credits:
Scott Fiddelke - Project Lead
Chris Timko - Lead Programmer
Li Zhou - Past Programmer
Jim Duncan - Advisor and Analysis
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