Posts Tagged ‘cable systems’

Cox and VCTA Name 4 Roanoke Area Scholarship Winners

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

Four outstanding Roanoke students have been named 2009-10 Virginia’s Future Leaders Scholarship winners by Cox Communications and the Virginia Cable Telecommunications Association (VCTA). Recipients and the college or university they will attend include:

* Kathryn Norbo, University of Virginia
* Craig Tripp, Virginia Tech
* Tim Rowe, Randolph Macon College
* Ryan Brock, Virginia Tech

These scholarships were among 73 awarded to Virginia students this year with a total of over $100,000 in scholarships awarded by local cable systems across the Commonwealth in partnership with the Donald A. Perry Foundation.

This year’s ‘Virginia’s Future Leaders’ scholarship recipients and their families were honored at the VCTA Annual Scholarship Luncheon held in Charlottesville, VA, at the Boar’s Head Inn in July.

Now in its 10th year, the Virginia’s Future Leaders Scholarship program is a statewide education initiative of the Virginia cable industry. To date over $700,000 in scholarships have been awarded to Virginia students attending Virginia colleges and universities.

The 2009-10 call for Virginia’s Future Leaders Scholarship applications will be available in early 2010. Cox Communications encourages Roanoke area students to visit the VCTA website in January at www.vcta.com for additional information and to apply.

About Cox Communications

Cox Communications is a multi-service broadband communications and entertainment company with more than 6.2 million total residential and commercial customers. The third-largest cable television company in the United States, Cox offers an array of advanced digital video, high-speed Internet and telephony services over its own nationwide IP network, as well as integrated wireless services. Cox Business is a full-service, facilities-based provider of communications solutions for commercial customers, providing high-speed Internet, voice and long distance services, as well as data and video transport services for small to large-sized businesses. Cox Media offers national and local cable advertising in traditional spot and new media formats, along with promotional opportunities and production services. Cox Communications wholly owns and operates the Travel Channel. More information about the services of Cox Communications, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises, is available at www.cox.com, www.coxbusiness.com, and www.coxmedia.com. In Hampton Roads, Cox has more than 400,000 basic cable subscribers.

About the Virginia Cable Telecommunications Association

The VCTA, established in 1966, serves as the trade association for the cable telecommunications industry in Virginia. Association membership is comprised of cable systems serving more than two (2) million subscribers in Virginia. Its mission is to positively promote the cable television, high-speed data and telecommunications services of member companies to the public, the business community and state officials.
www.vcta.com

UC Irvine Extension Offers New Course, “Digital Television: Fundamentals, Standards and Trends”

Friday, October 31st, 2008

The University of California, Irvine Extension announces a course titled, “Digital Television: Fundamentals, Standards and Trends.” The course is particularly timely, since at midnight February 17, 2009, television will undergo the biggest advance since the introduction of color: all full power over-the-air television stations will turn off their analog broadcast signal and switch over to 100 percent digital broadcast. The course will be offered online from Jan. 5 to March 22.

“Students in the course will enhance their knowledge of the principles of television transmission and the advantages and challenges of data delivery through terrestrial, satellite and cable systems,” explains course instructor, Dr. Jordan Isailovic, a scientist with JRI Technology and an author. “They will also gain new insights on the inner workings of digital television, just in time for the much talked about DTV transition.”

Participants will gain a point-by-point understanding of the DTV layered architecture, DTV transmission requirements, multiplexing, MPEG switching, audio components, and compatibility with traditional analog TV. The course will cover: decoding issues, display problems, format conversion, baseband data stream handling, and conditional access.

Upon completion of the course, learners should be able to:

* Use and formulate background for understanding the DTV standards.
* Discuss and explain enabling technologies.
* Explain the fundamentals of underlying modulation techniques.
* Present the fundamentals of digital compression for DTV.
* Discuss specifics of the MPEG-2 Delivery approaches.
* Discuss specifics of ATSC, DVB-B-C Systems.

For more information about the “Digital Television: Fundamentals, Standards and Trends” course, contact Rogelio Rodriguez at rcrodrig@uci.edu or to enroll call (949) 824-5414.

About the University of California, Irvine Extension: As the continuing education arm of UCI, UC Irvine Extension is dedicated to providing a university-level learning experience for students, offering thousands of exciting courses and programs to local, regional, and global constituencies. UC Irvine Extension offers a rich array of academic and community programs to support a diverse audience, from a wide selection of academic programs to numerous campus activities. For more information, please visit www.extension.uci.edu.

About the University of California, Irvine: The University of California, Irvine is a top-ranked university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Founded in 1965, UCI is among the fastest-growing University of California campuses, with more than 27,000 undergraduate and graduate students and about 1,400 faculty members. The second-largest employer in dynamic Orange County, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3.3 billion. For more UCI news, visit www.today.uci.edu.

Contact:

Echo Media Group
Leslie Licano, 714-573-0899
leslie@echomediapr.com

Source: The University of California, Irvine Extension

China Education Resources and SCOLA Sign Memorandum of Intent & Agreement

Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

China Education Resources Inc. – announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Intent and Agreement with SCOLA® (SCOLA), to cooperate in the project “Partnership in Language Resource Development”. SCOLA provides fee-based subscription services to Universities, Colleges, K-12 schools, cable systems, government language schools and individuals to use SCOLA-provided content and programs.

SCOLA and CER intend to create education programs and related content resources that will connect classrooms in China to classrooms in the U.S. where American and Chinese students can help each other learn a second language, study a new culture using authentic artifacts and personal interaction, and share best teaching practices in a variety of subject areas.

CER Chairman and CEO, Chengfeng Zhou, said, “This agreement with SCOLA builds on our CERSP and ESP commercialization strategy and we can implement it at minimal cost. We envision using our CERSP and ESP portals to create a new means of collaboration, resource sharing, and development of new teaching and learning strategies to benefit teachers and students in both countries and also promote better cultural understanding and positive relationships between the people of China and the United States.” The agreement projects the implementation of key initial projects during fourth quarter 2008.

SCOLA President and CEO, Francis Lajba, said, “For more than 20 years SCOLA has been an industry leader in promoting the use of foreign television programming and authentic foreign video content as an aid to teaching foreign languages and culture. We look forward to providing China Education Resources’ content as an education resource to our customers in the U.S. and throughout the world.”

The agreement enables CER and SCOLA to partner on select projects to develop and deploy learning materials that promote language proficiency and cultural awareness. Examples of such select projects include:

- Short “SCOLA on the Street” video interviews developed locally in China and the U.S.

- Modular, Mandarin language program targeting high school and adult students; covering a wide range of lifestyle and daily communications topics. Initially, ten segments will be designed for pod-casting (and other types of mobile, personal media equipment). The CER Memory game will be included in the program as a self-assessment feature;

- Interactive tutoring and community discussion platforms to facilitate Mandarin and English language programs.

Other services that may be developed, include SCOLA’s: Word TV On Line(TM); “Insta-Class”(TM); International Radio(TM); Foreign Text(TM); People and Places(TM); “On The Street”(TM); Word Search(TM); Digital Archive(TM); Global Marketplace(TM); and more.

About SCOLA

SCOLA’s mission is to help the people of the world learn about one another; their cultures, their languages and their ideologies. SCOLA emphasizes the importance and effectiveness of modem information technology as a tool in overcoming barriers to global understanding and is committed to continuing its position as the world leader in the area of foreign language learning, cultural awareness and video/audio content delivery and storage/retrieval/searching technology and capabilities at the forefront of its application. Information on SCOLA can be found at: http://www.scola.org

ABOUT CHINA EDUCATION RESOURCES INC.

In collaboration with China’s Ministry of Education Curriculum Development Center (CDC), China Education Resources Inc. (CER) is helping transform the curriculum of the world’s largest educational system. CER provides modern K-12 education content and services for education professionals, administrators, teachers, tutors, students and parents through its CERSP portal and 36 sub portals, including “My Study Room” and the school-wide, “Education Services Portal” (ESP). The CER Web Portal is a web-based gateway to the entire K-12 teaching and learning community in China (more than 600,000 schools, 12 million teachers, and 230 million students). As a strategic partner for implementing the government’s goal of modernizing its education system and learning procedures, CER is positioned to become China’s largest online education service and content provider in China’s kindergarten through twelfth grade market. Information on CER may be found at: http://www.chinaeducationresources.com