Logitech Quickcam Pro – USB web camera (2000)

By Roger Frost (for TES Online Magazine 2000)

Here is an inexpensive video camera than any school could do very clever tricks with. In fact anyone who wonders how to take pictures on the computer and send video in e-mail messages will soon treat all that as old hat. Want to show off the school live at work on a web page? No probs, it’s easy peasy.

There have been ‘web cam’ cameras before – tethered devices that perch on the monitor or clip to a shelf. What is special is that this golfball-like ‘Logitech Quickcam Pro’ offers a higher screen resolution (that is 640×480 dots) than before. It also adjusts the colour and brightness automatically, so it is convenient too. Lighting the subject well pays off with good pictures or mini-movies you could make into a class gallery. The Logitech software does the fiddly work in the background – it saves files, helps select shots and assembles the lot as a web page. Given the right details, it will send it all to your website.

Schools using e-mail to correspond with peers far away will gain the most: they can now *show* what they’re doing in video e-mails. Again the software takes care, squeezing a one-minute clip so that it takes a quite reasonable couple of minutes to email. You may wonder if what seems ‘cool’ just now, could be tomorrows way of doing e-mail.

One other feature, called a Motion Detector could be a real hoot in the classroom. Point the camera at the class and go take a break: while you are away it will check the scene for movement, sound an ping and start filming if someone leaves their seat. Change the ping sound to a recorded “get back in your place” and you’ll be on your way to superteacher status with no effort.    

Fun aside, and after you’ve used Microsoft Netmeeting – software that lets you videophone over the Internet, there’s something here to add little magic to classwork. Now it is easy and inexpensive, ‘videoconferencing’ just became too big a word.  

Details: www.logitech.com 

RRP £117 inclusive (Street price £75 + vat)