The Telecommunications Technology Department of Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) proposes to enhance its curriculum by acquiring a Digital Media Interactive Micro-Network Lab with assistance from the national Science Foundation. This request is made because the technical considerations involved in designing and configuring the visual information for the Internet is an area into which our students should be venturing but cannot, because our current facilities have no capability for the lab experiments. As information providers increasingly make use of the Internet, the benefits of being able to provide detailed moving images and user interactivity with the content are becoming clear. But the costs of such enabling solutions as fiber optic delivery have so far proven overwhelming, even to such large enterprises as telephone companies. We see increased experimentation looking for ways to improve data throughput on the Intimate as being desirable, but there are also possibilities for reducing the data demands of the material being fed into the Intimate. In the creation of moving images/sounds in windows controlled with selection buttons, there are a number of technical approaches which result in better quality and interactivity without increased bandwidth. The experiments outlined in this proposal seek to explore the tactics and techniques by which aspects of the information may be data-reduced while maintaining acceptable qualities as perceived by the user. The experiments pertain to two avenues of concern: 1) Finding the best techniques for reducing bandwidth demands for Internet-destined materials and CD-ROM-destined materials in motion 2) Finding the best techniques for providing enhanced user interactivity with these two media, up to and including digital simulation of using real-world instrumentation. With the Digital Media Interactive Micro-Network lab facility requested, our students could enter the realm of these technical challenges by performing the listed experi ments themselves and evaluating the results in both qualitative and quantitative terms. This lab is being envisioned as a micro-miniature working model of a world of CD-ROM and Internet . . _ _ . , .
