PVX Power

Just ran across this interesting blog entry, Polycom Rocks…. A learning technologies conference in Australia gave away PVX software and a free webcam to the participants! What a great idea! Wish I had attended! I also heard recently that the state of California negotiated a statewide license for PVX software for education.

I’m very curious how these entities will be using their PVX software. It’s interesting how this top notch quality product blurs the lines between “room” videoconferencing and desktop videoconferencing with tiny web screens and tools like Skype & Festoon. With PVX and a little Logitech webcam you can get a full screen high quality H.323 videoconference that looks amazingly good!
While I have reservations about schools jumping into VC with PVX instead of a regular VC unit, I’ve recommended this to one of my tiny private schools that wouldn’t be able to do videoconferencing otherwise. It’s a bit of a stretch to use PVX with a room full of kids, but with a small class size of 15 or so, it’s almost manageable. The challenge is the microphone is designed for use by one person at a computer, so students have to come up closer to the computer to connect. Not ideal for projects like Read Across America and MysteryQuest, but doable.

On the other hand, the PVX solution is GREAT for meetings, quick conversations with colleagues, and for monitoring conferences from my office! Now in theory I can watch three conferences at a time with a VSX7000, a Viewstation, and PVX on my laptop.

I wonder what is next in the convergence of videoconference technologies!

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