In 24 classrooms at the University of Washington, devices are capturing lectures and almost immediately making them available to the entire student population via automatic Internet feeds.
Washington students used to have to walk to the university library to get these recordings, reports Campus Technology. Now they can download them directly.
The key is a device called a Barix Instreamer, which takes audio from the classroom PA system and sends it to a university server as an easy-to-use MP3 file. That can be done with standard computers as well, but computer are prone to glitches during audio capture, according to a university technology official, while the Instreamers are "bulletproof." –Josh Fischman
