Georgetown High School Students Interview Iraq Soldiers in Teleconference

Here in Central Texas, Georgetown high school students crossed the 7,300 miles between their campus and Baghdad, Iraq using an Internet teleconferencing system to speak live with an Iraqi soldiers. The school set up a giant screen in the library allowing students to speak in real time with soldiers on the other side of the world. The US Army and Williamson County Commissioner Valerie Covey set up the teleconference.
This is a great practice being performed because it allows for lots of interviews in a limited amount of time. With the new technology there does not have to be a camera crew and reporter to establish an interview. It allows for the audience to interact with someone in actual time. The most beneficial aspect is that the audience is affected much more when they have a real interaction with a soldier overseas explaining the current conflict.
Now that the war has been going on for a few years, the recent and current high school students across America have become more interested in the Army. There are interview with soldiers in Iraq but reporters getting paid do them. They see the commercials and other forms of advertising everywhere but don’t get the chance to talk to soldiers in service. That is why it was a great idea to set up a large-scale teleconference with an appropriate audience.

The only real problems with the teleconference were that the screen in the library often became fuzzy and hard to see the soldiers. The audio worked well which was the most important part but there was an eight second delay between the students and the soldiers. These are all easy problems to solve in the future and should be used more frequently with students. It is a great way to really influence young adults instead of just advertising.