Welcome to the Dubuque School District Realtime Walking Tour. What's a Realtime Walking Tour? It's an extremely compelling form of reality television. Imagine that you are on a personal guided tour with one of our teachers or administrators of virtually any corner of our school district, a new construction site, a school building, a classroom. Anything that piques your interest. In this case, however, we are using a video POV (point of view) camera and it accompanies the guide on the tour but never shuts off. It captures as much of the scene as possible as the tour commenses. This type of video gives you a unique and important perspective. Sometimes the camera takes you into places you might not go otherwise.
Above, Dale Lass, Principal of Dubuque's new middle school and project manager of the building's thousands of details. Mr. Lass takes you on a personal Realtime Walking Tour of the school.
Instructions For Those Outside of Our School Network (The General Public)

We are now providing a choice of RealPlayer applications for you to download and install on your computer to enable you to view the video and audio files. One is RealPlayer8 and the other is RealOne Player, which is an excellent player with many new features. It's easy to install, so just follow the on-screen steps. You will be required to register with Real.com, but these are free software applications (there are versions you can pay for if you choose, but they are not necessary for basic viewing and listening).

Which Player is Best for Me?

Of the two types of free players available, RealPlayer 8 is the traditional player that is free and will work beautifully to access Web based multimedia files from our site. There is also a new player available, which is also free, called RealONE. Either player will probably work for your operating system. If your system is older (Windows 95, NT), however, you may want to use the RealPlayer 8 software. If you are running a newer, faster system like Windows 98, ME, XP, or 2000, go for the RealOne player.

Macintosh Owners:

You can get a RealPlayer for Macintosh, Visit Real.com to download their free player options. Remember, look for the FREE players. They are sometimes difficult to find on their Web site.

Oh, and one more thing... sometimes when you click on a sound or video file in our Web site with the RealPlayer installed, you get a little commercial window that pops up on your desktop. It's annoying, but a small price to pay for the privilege of having the free RealPlayer on your system. Just click it off, and it will disappear.

Instructions For Machines on our School Network (Teachers and Staff)
We are recommending (and IT is supporting) RealPlayer8. This is for ALL computers on our network (in all school and administration buildings throughout the District). This includes all Windows 2000 machines. Click here to get the free player from our network server. If you do not have administrative priveleges, please call your building media specialist to help you.
Video Control Panel
For connections on anything but a high-speed network, like a phone modem. This is not a streaming file. It will play once it's fully downloaded. It's not a large movie (not more than 240 pixels wide). This is for DSL or higher-speed networks. Larger video, better audio. This is for high speed connections to the Web. It is a streaming media file in RealPlayer. Requires RealPlayer software to play (available to download free on this page. Look below.
This is for cable modems and high-speed networks (like Mediacom). It's also perfect for T-1 conections to the Internet. It's a streaming file. Windows Media File for Windows Internet Explorer and operating systems equipped with Windows Media Player. High speed Web access preferred.
You can download an archival copy of the movie by right clicking on the Windows Media button above right, and Click on "Save Target" or "Save Linked Target." This will download the movie file completely to a place you designate on your hard drive. It's a WMA file.

Construction projects are an ideal use of the Realtime, POV camera because a construction site can be a dangerous place. In this case, the camera can show you aspects of a project that would not normally be seen by the public, and this is enhanced by an experienced guide.

Our first Realtime Walking Tour is with our pincipal of the newly constructed middle school in our community, Dale Lass. He's not only the principal but project coordinator for all purchases and installations in the new middle school. He'll also do the staffing. Currently he's neck deep in technology details for the new building. It's critical we get our wiring and information utilities in the building now before walls and floors are finished. He is supervising all aspects of construction, so he is a qualified expert on the project.

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If you are an employee of the Dubuque Community School Distrct, The Hub is for you. You need your building name
and password to gain access. Ask your school secretary or media specialist for that information.