Grant Winners Announced

ICTP's Science Dissemination Unit (SDU) has awarded academic webcasting equipment grants to five institutes in developing countries. The 'International 2011 e-Learning Grant using SDU's openEyA Automated Lecture Capture System' aims to help non-profit institutions from UN member countries implement the automated production of digital scientific content for e-learning and distance education.

The grants winners for 2011 are:

• Facultad de Ciencias, Departamento de Fisica
  Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota, Colombia
• Institute of Cybernetics, Mathematics & Physics (ICIMAF)
  Havana, Cuba
• The Mongolian Academy of Sciences
  Institute of Informatics, Mongolia
• School of Physics and Technology
  V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, Ukraine
• Vietnam Auger Training Laboratory (VATLY)
  Institute for Nuclear Science and Technology (INST), Vietnam

The grant provides the USB components--two high-definition webcams and an omni-directional microphone--needed to implement the openEyA automated recording system. The software is downloadable for free. Users can operate the system on any low-cost netbooks or portable computers running the Linux Ubuntu operating system.

OpenEyA is an innovative automated audio/video/slide recording system, developed by SDU to archive and share scientific lectures and talks carried out using digital presentations (PPT, PDF, animations, etc) and especially traditional chalkboards found in classrooms.

For more information, visit the openEyA website.