Digital Video Interaction to support frontal lecturing inmultiple platforms of internet based communication

This paper reports on an active role played by the students of the Digital Communication degree at the School of Sciences of the University of Milan, Italy, to develop e-learning supports both in their university and in the high schools where they studied previously. Creating and maintaining portal websites, discussion forums, learning objects to be exchanged, and more recently, an interactive video-journal that’s accessible on mobile phones and WEB-TV, have enhanced the learning process both in the University of Milan and in the aforementioned high schools, through the use of new digital technologies in order to supplement the traditional teaching methods in the classroom, that are bound to the dimensions of space (location) and time. Explanations and feedback regarding the lectures in class are made available through videos uploaded to our WEBCEN server in the LCAD University Research Laboratory, while teaching support is implemented by a community effort which involves teachers as well. Results achieved are measured through the reduction in the amount of insufficient marks among the students at the end of each Academic Year. Interactive Digital Television (IDTV) has opened new frontiers for the diffusion of e-learning support platforms, and when internet connection and internet-based content will also be available on IDTV networks starting from the Spring of 2009, the amount of interaction will reach a new and more significant dimension. Hypertexts will also play a key role in the reachability and fruition of our e-learning support and Interactive VideoJournal applications in multiple platforms with internet connection capability.