I am facing the end of an era. What once ruled scores of sites, students, and teachers now lies mostly neglected, relegated to two or three classrooms a night. ITV is coming to an end. Fort Hays State University pioneered the program, building it—and much of the equipment—from scratch. Now, the program is dying, site by site. Night by night. Two monitors can barely work enough to scratch 14 or 15 hours—when before three monitors were needed, one working over 20. The Tomanek control room is virtually desolate, housing unused and broken equipment. The classrooms themselves are breaking down, camera by camera. But why fix it, when soon it will no longer be required? A teacher is experimenting with Marratech--marrying Polycom technology with webcams. If anything can save ITV, that would be it. Right now, though, most ITV classes have been changed to online. I foresee the trend only continuing.
Former ITV moniters, I salute you. You have shared in a glorious past--one that will not be forgotten by..well, at least me. Those lonely nights in the control room, doing homework, surfing the Internet, staying at your post, and doing the odd minute or two of work--remember those days, for they were beautiful. You saved teachers in distress, students who were disconnected, and recorded classes for when all hope was lost. You, Wielder of the Mighty Polycom Remote, knew the secrets of Volume control, Projector sources, and VCR technology. Sure, a trained monkey could perform most of your tasks--but remember: Ron Hart chose You. In my experience, this has been the best job in the world. Well, except for maybe the ice cream taster.
1 comment:
Ah, yes, who could forget Chimples the ITV chimp. He was the greatest ITV monitor ever.
And then we ate him. What can I say, ITV fell on some hard times, although I didn't find out about the hard times until much later.
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