SCHOOL OF THE FUTURE - While in the Netherlands recently, the Masie Group visited a new institution site in Hertogenbosch, where the Dutch government has commissioned the creation of a School of the Future to create prototypes for how the next generation will learn and study. Focusing on the age range of late teens and early twenties, the School of The Future will feature the latest in learning technologies and collaborative processes. They are in the final stages of construction on a building site that will contain a blend of learning lab setups, technology hosting facilities for distributed events and models for coaching and simulation.

School of the Future Director, Ian Ginn, detailed their desire to be spokes in a worldwide hub of research and development for learning and technology. The Masie Group made arrangements to bring Ian and the School to the TechLearn '98 Conference in November via video. "We'll tour their new facility which will have just opened in November and look at the state of learning technology in Europe," said Masie. You can check out their emerging web site at http://www.svdt.org and see a picture of the building as it nears completion. (TechLearn Trends, Technology & Learning Updates # 48 - 21 June 98)

OMNISIGHT - This new "all-around" videoconferencing system is designed to maintain one center of common attention for all participants and include all participants in the picture. With everyone seated around a circular table, a panoramic camera (with eight integrated heads) shoots from the center of the table at 360 degrees around the room and is combined with a full view of the current speaker, achieved by incorporating an automatic direction-finding function which enables the camera to point instantaneously at the speaker, as the speaker begins to talk. The systems microphone array achieves the best possible sound from the correct direction. In addition, OmniSight features easy system integration into existing VC setups. (Teleconferencing Business, May/June 98, pp. 10, 19 and 21)