Electronic "Site Tours" come to Northern Ontario

Abstract

Northern Ontario secondary school students have been touring museums, galleries, and other organizations electronically. With the help of Contact North's audiographic teleconferencing network, institutions like the Art Gallery of Ontario, located in Toronto, and the Royal Canadian Mint in Ottawa have been able to conduct electronic "site tours" of their facilities. Students living in communities on the Contact North network can participate in these tours while physically remaining in their home communities. The tours have been made possible through audio- teleconferencing and the use of Optel Telewriter pages made up of digital images that can be displayed at each site simultaneously. Slides prepared by the institutions were converted into digital images on computer disks. They were then distributed to each participating school prior to the tour. The guides were then able to call up each image as needed from their site in Ottawa or Toronto. The images would then appear simultaneously on the monitors at each site.