Research And Development Of Internet Education Framework Based On IPTV For The Rural Areas

IT construction for education in rural areas is a significant part of Chinese education reform and strategic planning. It can help integrate high-quality learning resources from the colleges and society, and send them to the large amount of learners in the vast rural areas, especially those in the poverty-stricken or underdeveloped areas in the middle and western China. It can also be crucial in promoting distance education in those areas and bridging the information gap between the urban and rural areas. However, two problems need to be addressed. Firstly, both teachers and students in rural areas are still very inadequate in information technology and lack enough knowledge about the information platform. Secondly, IT construction requires technological equipments, but there is not enough financial support. Considering these problems, more research should be done about the technology and patterns for distance education.Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) proves to be a solution. IPTV is a brand-new technology that employs broadband infrastructure and uses domestic television sets or computer as the main terminal device. Incorporating Internet, multimedia and communication, IPTV offers family users various interactive digital media service, for example, digital TV. This technology will achieve unification of user terminals, and provide highly individualized learning service, with high quality simultaneous interactivity. The application of IPTV in distance education can enlarge greatly the scope of distance education, giving more people the opportunities to learn.Taking into consideration the characteristics and problems of IT construction in rural area education, this thesis presents first an internet education framework based on IPTV for the rural areas. Making the best use of the present internet conditions and the high prevalence of TV in the countryside, such a framework can be very useful in integrating learning resources and serving the rural education. After a research about the related technology of IPTV, this thesis completes the design of IPTV internet education system for the countryside education, which includes the functional patterns for database, service generator and portal platform display. This system adopts Client/Server pattern in system frame, SQL Server2000 in database and Visual Studio 2005 as a development. Such an IPTV system is advanced in technology, easy in operation and low in cost, and more importantly, it is simple and convenient for the countryside users.