Video-mediated communication in the classroom to support sick children: a case study

Video mediated communication is a valuable educational resource because it provides access to otherwise unreachable learning materials, it motivates students, and helps them improve their communication skills. Over the last four years we have developed a unique application of video mediated communication known as Wayne Gretzky's Providing Education By Bringing Learning Environments to Students (PEBBLES). This is a video-mediated communication system that has been designed to link a child in the hospital with his/her regular classroom. Analysis of video tape data from a six-week case study documenting the frequency of interactions and usage behaviors indicates that the student was able to spend most of her in-class time focussing on the academic tasks assigned to the class despite some technical difficulties and distractions in her local environment. Audio difficulties persisted throughout the study and must be improved in future design iterations of the system. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.