The virtual teacher: Device provides long-distance class 'presence'

NORTH RICHLAND HILLS, Texas — Sandra Carney sat at the front of the classroom in her "Cogito Ergo Sum" T-shirt — "I think therefore I am" — leading her Latin class through a rapid-fire question-and-answer session on a society that flourished 2,000 years ago.

It was an impressive assembly, made more so by the fact that some of her students sat in other high schools, miles away.

But even that didn't match the technological wizardry in her home classroom at Richland High School.

As Carney shot questions at her students — who focused their eyes directly on her — the real Carney sat perhaps 10 feet away, in a little teaching station she called "the telephone booth."

The Carney the students were watching was a life-size, three-dimensional projection.

If the letters on Carney's T-shirt hadn't been reversed, you'd think she'd suddenly sprouted a twin.

But the real excitement surrounding Carney's double life is the potential the technology brings to long-distance education.

Using a device called a Teleporter, developed by Teleportec of Richardson, Texas, teachers can appear in dozens of classrooms simultaneously, look every student in the eye and create a true you-are-there educational experience. The system at Richland is the first demonstration of that technology in an American public school, officials said.

"One of the main advantages of this technology is that some districts can't afford to pay teachers for certain courses, or even find teachers," said Sylvia Kelley, director of marketing for the Alliance for Higher Education in Richardson.

Kelley, whose not-for-profit group works to find new and better methods of bringing education to people, said the technology "gives people access to different kinds of teaching in a whole new teaching arena."

That's certainly true of Carney's Latin II class, which includes a couple of students at Haltom High School and another student at Godley High School in Johnson County.

Without Carney, none of those students would be taking Latin II this year.

"I like it," said Jay Dennis, a student at Godley. "It's different. I'm used to having a teacher standing right behind me, breathing down my neck."

The students at Godley and Haltom can ask and answer questions during class, thanks to TV cameras and microphones installed in all three classrooms and high-speed data connections.

But for now, they have to settle for seeing Carney on conventional TVs.

If they had Teleporters, though, they'd see her life-size and lifelike. She'd see them the same way.

"If they got one of our systems," said Duffie White, Teleportec's CEO, "the image would appear three-dimensional, with eye contact between the teacher and students."

The Teleporter projects the teacher's image between a lectern and a dark background.

"You see the image of a life-size person. You look them in the eye, and they look back at you," he said.

"Even if you're at a remote location, you have contact with the students. That's the one thing we tell teachers — involve your class."

The students get so involved that they naturally focus on the image, said Ernie Valamides, an assistant principal at Richland. They tend to look at it rather than at the real Carney in her teaching station, he said.

But that's the effect the system seems to have.

At a recent local demonstration, said Matt Lawyer, technical consultant for the Birdville School District, one late-comer walked up to the projected image to introduce herself.

In a classroom in Great Britain, one 11-year-old student was so convinced the image of a math teacher was the real thing that he tried to hand the image his homework assignment, White said.

"By contrast with TV, TVs don't talk directly to you, and you aren't as engaged, and you don't have that sense of the teacher's presence," White said.

The technological changes require some adjustments, both by teachers and students.

Now, Carney said, she's more active, more visual in her presentations. Students have grown used to watching images from the Teleporter projector and on various TV screens in the room.

"The kids love it," Valamides said. "For them to experience the highest in the technology going on now is a real positive. And they really like getting to know the kids from the other schools."

In fact, Ricky Rodriguez, a student in Carney's Latin I class, has embarked on a budding romance with a girl from Haltom High. They met on TV — the view televised from her classroom and from his.

Schools find a lot to love about the idea, too — especially being able to provide classes they might not offer otherwise.

With math, science and some language teachers in short supply, the opportunities seem enormous.

White looks forward to the day when the technology is so widespread that a Spanish class in the United States could be taught by a teacher in Mexico, or in Spain for that matter.

"Then think about teaching Japanese or Chinese," White said. "There are some problems with time differences. But I think you'd find teachers in France, for example, who'd be delighted to do a night course there that would be during the middle of the school day here."

Cost is a factor, of course. The technology is new, introduced in the United States in the spring, so prices are fairly high.

Lawyer estimated that Richland's Teleporter system cost $96,000, with most of that money coming from grants. But White said that as the Teleporter technology spreads in the United States and globally, "the price will drop dramatically."

As long as the subject is in front of the Teleporter's camera, the technology can create a palpable presence.

But it does have limits, Carney said.

"The problem for me is I talk with my hands. And now I can't tell my fish stories anymore," she said.

"That's because as the fish gets bigger, my hands disappear right off the screen."