Amy Weismann, Deputy Director, University of Iowa Center for Human Rights

For those of us in rural communities and small towns, outside large metropollitan areas where NGOS and service providers engage human rights as a framework for their activities, connecting students to "real life experience" in the human rights field, especially to a diverse array of approaches to human rights work, is sometimes a challenge. We all share the insight that teaching about the practice of human rights requires imaginative, cost-effective strategies as well as a network of support. I've found that vidoeconferencing provides an immediacy of experience that is quite impactful, and that it helps build a network of support for teaching about human rights without the need for practitioners to undertake expensive, time consuming (and carbon emission producing!) travel to reach your students. I've had great recent experiences utilizing videoconferencing technologies to bring practitioners from around the world into my undergraduate classroom in Iowa City. From the feedback my students have provided, I believe it has opened opportuntiies for bridging the theory-practice divide. I'll share the nuts and botls with you here.

I've experimented with the use of vidoeconferencing using two systems supported by the University of Iowa. One system requires site-to-site transmission and allows for very high quality, real time video and audio interaction between a class of students and the practitioner, both of whom , however, must be situated in respective rooms at each location equipped with cameras and microphones. The system is internet-based and is called "H.323/IP". Here is the support website for the H.323/IP program at the University of Iowa: http://at.its.uiowa.edu/digimedia/collabtools/collaborationenvironments.shtml>.

Although not yet universally available, many colleges and Universities with this technology are interested in encourgaing its use as a teaching tool and make it available to faculty and staff for use in classroom teaching, with tech support to boot! And in many cases, the viodeconferecne can be recorded for student review and use in teaching at a later date.

Another resource, one that has the potential for much wider usage, is Ellminate Live!. it is particularly well suited for human rights related classrooms because it can be accessed and used by anyone with a computer, including practitioners in living in communities around the world without access to high speed internet. It provides mutliple channels to run at a time so that practitioners can present together from different locations, allows for powerpoint and video to run simulataneously with the live presentations, has a live chat option so that students can pose questions to the practitioner or if multiple practitioners are on line with the class at once, can pose them to one another for the class to see.

Elluminate Live's training and support web pages: http://www.elluminate.com/support/training/

University of Iowa's Elluminate Live service: http://globalcampus.uiowa.edu

In some cases, the convenience of a videoconference, especially from a home or office computer terminal, has allowed practitioners whose time constraints would have prevented them from attending a class to share their expertise nonetheless from the convenience of their home or office.

Through these two systems, I've been able to connect my class with practitioners from Berkeley, California to Chicago, Illinois, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to The Hague, The Netherlands.

If your school does not support these or other viodeconferecning systems for teaching use, you may wish to ask why, and request that your technology services unit invest in supporting a system. It has the potential to bring the world to your students!