Light Bridge employs videoconferencing to support pre-service teachers at distant sites. Student teachers and their mentors collaborate with university faculty via videoconferencing that includes video samples of teaching.

We examined a range of equipment and software solutions and chose the Tandberg 880 system and codec for ease of set-up and use. The Tandberg system is H.323 compliant (videoconferencing over the Internet) and we have used it to conference with Polycom and other H.323 compliant systems.

We have established a videoconferencing office for university faculty to confer with pre-service teachers and their mentors. We have also created a mobile videoconferencing unit for university faculty to use in their offices or classrooms. Finally, we have two portable units for deployment to remote sites where H.323 compliant equipment is not available.

Our videoconferencing experience to date has been with students placed in various schools in Mendocino, Marin, Lake , Napa and Sonoma Counties . Since we began this project, one Hundred and Thirty Three pre-service teachers and their mentors have conferred with university faculty.

For the coming year we will serve forty-eight pre-service teachers in Mendocino, Lake, Napa, Marin Sonoma and Solono Counties. All participants will be trained in documenting their teaching with video. In addition Light Bridge is establishing additional Videoconferencing sites at other California State University campuses.

Light Bridge has developed a "user friendly" guide that will help students, mentors, and supervisors in their set up and conducting of videoconferences using the Tandberg 880 portable unit available at Sonoma State University.
A table of contents follows:

For a more general overview of video conferencing, the most useful, comprehensive and concise resource for videoconferencing over the Internet is the ViDe Videoconferencing Cookbook (Version 3.0) offered by the Video Development Initiative.