BELLE project to connect Canadian universities to video, graphical content

An Alberta group is launching a $3.4-million research project this month promises to give Canada a technological lead in sharing educational video, text and graphics over broadband networks. Led by Netera Alliance Inc, the BELLE project works with five locations to test new ways of organizing, distributing and using digital educational material. Another five sites will come onboard by year’s end. If successful, Netera officials hope funding will continue after March 2002 to move the initiative from prototype to a full repository eventually linking every university and college in the country. BELLE PARTICPANTSBanff Centre for the ArtsMcGill Faculty of MedicineNorthern Alberta Institute for TechnologySeneca@YorkSheridan CollegeUniversity of AlbertaUniversity of British ColumbiaUniversity of CalgaryUniversity of LethbridgeVancouver Film SchoolBELLE (Broadband Enabled Lifelong Learning Environment) is divided into five components designed to test new hardware and software to overcome hurdles to sharing educational material across Canada’s experimental CA*net 3 fibre backbone. The five experiments are inter-linked, and consist of finding ways to share, serve, evaluate and sustain a central repository of information. Material will be digitized and served to participants using a combination of servers from Callisto Media Systems, SGI and Apple. The key, says project head Doug MacLeod, is work being done to create standard meta-tags – instructions wrapped around different content to make it searchable and viewable across different applications. To date, a lack of compatibility has hindered efforts to share material, and successfully solving that difficulty would make Canada a pioneer in collecting a nationwide database. "We don’t have object repositories in Canada, and in fact, no one in the world really has a good one. But, if we get a standard, we’ll have a leg up on almost every country in the world," he says. "If we believe that education is important to the Canadian economy, then building these object repositories is critical to building online education. Before you can build your object repository, you have to have your meta-tagging standards. You can see how it all links together." Prototyping work for the project has to be completed by March 21, 2002, and Netera is hoping to have a conference of the partners and their collaborators before the project is through. Those interested in viewing the test will have their chance this May at the CANARIE Inc-sponsored Net2001 conference in Calgary.CANARIE kick-started the project with A $1.3-million grant, matched by the 10 partners, including Sheridan College, the Vancouver Film School, Seneca@York and the Banff Centre for the Arts. Of Netera’s role, MacLeod says "we’re not going to try to build a complete repository of information. We’re going to try different types of content from different types of applications and disciplines just to see what works and what doesn’t…. The Banff Centre alone has such an archive of film and video that we could get clips just to test out anything we wanted." The BELLE project represents a natural evolution into content for the Alberta group, which began as the steward of Alberta’s next-generation networks in 1993 as WurcNet. As broadband begins moving into communities, and eventually homes, MacLeod says the group’s focus will increasingly be on the content. "Without the content, and the applications, the networks are useless. ." MacLeod says he hopes other provinces will follow Alberta’s lead in creating the broadband networks necessary to enable online education. Last fall, the government unveiled plans to build a $356-million high-speed fibre network across the province. "It doesn’t matter how much it costs because it’s essential," he told CNM. "If every province were working the same way, and talking about getting the broadband connectivity to their schools and libraries, and about building up the content and the applications, we could leapfrog the entire world…. We could have an online education system in a matter of a few years." More information about the BELLE project can be found here

BELLE project to connect Canadian universities to video, graphical content

News | 02/07/2001 5:00 am EST

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