Pushing More Buttons - Extending the Boundaries of VC Broadcast

In this session see how Questacon is exploring ways to maintain engagement, impact and interactivity while increasing the number of active endpoints, and the steps being taken to reformat some of its VC sessions to more closely approximate broadcast styles.

Questacon’s national brief covers all States and Territories and all school sectors including 10 000 schools and tens of thousands of individual classes. Currently, multiple teams of Questacon science communicators physically tour regional and remote Australia, while interactive VC workshops are delivered from Canberra for individual school classes. Meanwhile, Questacon is supporting the Inspiring Australia national science communication strategy that addresses the need for a more coordinated approach to public engagement with the sciences.

As more schools and school systems enter the world of virtual excursions and as the National Broadband Network is progressively rolled out, how can content providers plan to cope with a VC demand tsunami or to avoid a content drought? 

Some technologies used to maximise students’ engagement include green screen and immersive digital environments, autocue equipment for maximum eye contact, high speed motion image capture for analysing live demonstrations, radio microphones for presenter mobility, atmospheric lighting, pre-recorded video packages, subtitles, internet streaming for ubiquitous access, and using multiple content-provider endpoints.

So, what has Questacon learnt from venturing into broadcast-style VC sessions?

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