Category:	EBS, Videoconferencing, PICtureTel
Description:	PictureTel and Enron Link Five Continents to Create orld's 
Largest Classroom
Detail:	
Business Wire  3/1/00

England's Prime Minister Tony Blair part of 16-hour Global Leap video 
conference with U.S. astronauts, thousands of children and others 

PictureTel Corporation (Nasdaq: PCTL) has created the world's largest 
classroom, bringing American astronauts face-to-face with schoolchildren, 
mathematicians and others in a worldwide educational video conference. For 
Global Leap - a 16-hour distance-learning event - PictureTel furnished 
technical support and video streaming over the Internet via Enron Broadband 
Services' ePowered Media Cast(TM). 

Presented jointly with Slough, England's Arbour Vale School, classroom 
sessions included live, interactive "virtual field trips," where children can 
talk to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, astronauts at the National 
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), divers at the Great Barrier 
Reef, mathematicians at Cambridge University, game wardens in South Africa 
and others around the world. Up to 20 learning sites were involved in each 
session, while 3,000 more participated via Internet video streaming. 

The event also marked the launch of www.Global-Leap.com, an online directory 
of educational videoconference links for schools. 

Global Leap 2000 was organized by Arbour Vale teacher Mike Griffith, who 
noted: "The Internet and other communications technology are making the world 
smaller by the second. That's why education must become more global in focus. 
Global Leap 2000 demonstrates the educational value of videoconferencing, and 
shows how technology breaks down cultural barriers by bringing students and 
others to places they may never otherwise experience." 

PictureTel, the world leader in video-based communications, has provided full 
technical support for the event, including the "electronic bridge" that 
connected thousands of children worldwide, through fully interactive 
videoconferencing. In addition, PictureTel's Enterprise Services Division 
made the event available to thousands more, through streaming video over the 
Internet. 

"Global Leap 2000 demonstrates the vast potential that distance-learning 
holds for students of any level," said Dr. Norman Gaut, PictureTel's chairman 
and chief executive officer. "By bringing interesting subjects from around 
the world inside the classroom - and allowing real-time interaction - Arbour 
Vale School enabled PictureTel to show that any obstacle to communication can 
be overcome." 



About PictureTel 

PictureTel Corporation is the world leader in developing, manufacturing and 
marketing a full range of visual- and audio-collaboration and streaming-video 
solutions. The company's systems meet customers' collaboration needs from the 
desktop to the boardroom. PictureTel also markets network conferencing 
servers and a comprehensive portfolio of enterprise-wide services. Additional 
PictureTel information is available at www.picturetel.com. PictureTel 
collaboration products and services eliminate the barrier of distance, 
enabling people to be Anywhere Now(TM).