WJU Students Play Key Role with New NASA DLiNfo Channel
Wed Oct 27 2010
Students at Wheeling Jesuit University are getting a unique opportunity to work behind the scenes of the new NASA DLiNfo Channel on NASA TV.
In August the NASA-sponsored Classroom of the Future program took on responsibility for the 24-7 operation and expansion of the NASA DLiNfo Channel. That channel features programs disseminated by the space agency's Digital Learning Network (DLN). Through distance learning technologies like videoconferencing and webcasting, the DLN connects students and teachers with NASA experts and education specialists.
Don Watson, manager of video support services at the Center for Educational Technologies, saw a great opportunity with the new responsibility for the channel for the professional communications students he teaches as an adjunct faculty member at the university. The students are now working with the NASA DLiNfo Channel as part of work study or as professional internships.
The students share many responsibilities. They are helping with program acquisition, validation of program format with the media servers, categorizing programs, and ingesting the programs into the media server. The students are creating promos and bumpers for on-air use related to live programming schedules, and they also are building program air schedules that feature more than 20 themes, such as math and ratios, the environment, weather, teacher training, robotics, and NASA careers.
"NASA and the Classroom of the Future strive to provide hands-on, real-life, career-related experiences that challenge, inspire, and provide practical application," Watson said. "The work on the DLiNfo Channel complements and expands upon the students' academic education."
