Ontario may soon have its own student and educational IPTV channel, delivered over the ORION network.

Several Ontario colleges and universities are expected to send representatives to a ground-breaking workshop next month, to consider launching the channel over Ontario’s ultra high speed optical network. The Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, Ontario’s globally celebrated digital media educational centre, is partnering with ORION to host the event on June 18 and 19, at its main Oakville campus.

While Ontario film, television, digital media and animation programs enjoy an international reputation for quality and innovation, much of the content produced by students and faculty remains within institutional walls and not actively shared with broader, external audiences. As well, there are few opportunities for Ontario institutions to share and collaborate among themselves.

Apart from providing a shared platform on which to build a new network, the channel would also serve as a showcase of Ontario’s digital media capabilities.

“ORION now provides us with an opportunity to develop an Ontario IP-based channel which can showcase the very best that our colleges and universities have to offer and raise global awareness of the pool of talent and expertise developed and nurtured here in film, broadcast and digital media,” says Phil Baker, ORION President and CEO.

“Our colleagues in Ontario film and broadcast education are excited about the idea,” said Sandy McKean, Associate Dean of Sheridan’s Media, School of Animation, Arts & Design, who anticipates significant participation from Ontario colleges, in particular. Other participants include faculty from York and Ryerson Universities, among others.

The channel, ideally delivered over a shared digital platform linking all participating Ontario institutions, could host programmed and on-demand student, faculty and educational content, taking advantage of ORION’s capabilities as an advanced platform that can support enhanced transmission of digital content. The workshop will also look at the potential for such a channel to support learning and training opportunities and act as a test bed for research and development in digital and IP broadcast technologies.

Providing a high-capacity digital platform for student and educational content on campus is a growing phenomenon, driven in part by the deployment of high bandwidth research and education networks. A number of Ontario institutions are already collaborating with the Ohio-based Open Student Television Network (OSTN) and providing student-generated content. INUK-TV, based in the UK, is a new player in the field, currently involved in a pilot project with the University of Waterloo, offering programmed and on-demand video content on campus.

“While these are great opportunities for Ontario students and schools, we’d like to explore the idea of launching our own Ontario-based channel,” says André Quenneville, ORION Director of Public Affairs. “We’d like to aim high … more than just a YouTube on steroids, but creating a genuine platform that can showcase excellence, and serve as a test bed for next-generation IP broadcast technologies. Ontario has been a pre-eminent leader in this field and we’d like to offer a platform to help us take it to the next level,” he said.

“We certainly have the skills, the resources and the content. All the ingredients are in place.”

ORION has commissioned a discussion paper, to be circulated prior to the workshop, providing a snapshot of what Ontario schools are doing now, the platforms they are using, and some of the issues involved in launching a channel. It will also incorporate findings of a pre-workshop survey of Ontario colleges and universities on current activities.

The workshop, the first effort to gather all of Ontario postsecondary film, broadcast and digital media schools, will also showcase several of the schools' successful projects, from the University of Western Ontario, to Ryerson University, as well as Sheridan and others.

The participants will also hear from colleagues outside Canada, who have deployed successful educational channel over IP networks. Among the confirmed workshop participants is Amy Philipson, Executive Director of the successful Research Channel based at the University of Washington in Seattle, affiliated with Internet2 and a leader in IP educational broadcasting and web-casting, as well as advanced HD over IP research and development.

For more information about the workshop, visit www.orion.on.ca/iptvworkshop.


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