When Jon Oates came into his position as a CTE Media Arts instructor at West Park High School in Roseville, CA, he was joining a district that was committed to media education in a school that was just four years old. The school was in the process of building out its media and performance campus, encompassing new buildings, performance, and broadcast spaces, AV infrastructure, and networked AV.
Oates was in a very relatable situation; he was inheriting an AV system in process where certain decisions had been made, other elements remained incomplete, and there were a lot of plans for the future. Oates would be overseeing the students on their WestParkTV broadcasts and teaching Media Production, Advanced Media, and Media Management. With his theater, music, and worship background, he would also have the chance to interact with the Performing Arts and Music departments in new AV-enabled ways.
On day one, Oates started in a barebones classroom with quality AV elements, but no network as yet to support them. A new arts building was just being completed with a small theater, green room, and more. Oates, predecessor had specified about half the gear, including a Dante audio network for the space.
“We were doing the walkthrough with the drama teacher, and she asked a simple question,” Oates recalled. “How do my performers hear and see what’s going on onstage?” The answer was a basic Dante AV feed from the FOH booth to the green room. “That was our proof of concept,” Oates recalls.
It was also the beginning of an expanded network mindset that would chart the AV course for West Park High. “I saw the chance to marry the existing equipment with my vision of what to do with the shell of a broadcast room we had. I wanted to bring in video mixing, lightboards, and computers.” But Oates also saw the chance to think bigger and more campus-wide.
At the time, Oates was personally unfamiliar with Dante but from his work in houses of worship, he was connected to AJA. This relationship turned out to be the doorway into Dante AV for West Park High. Oates became one of the early users of AJA’s Dante AV 4K-T and 4K-R, the bridge that united West Park’s existing Canon XA cameras and Roland V-60HD 12G-SDI switcher with the Dante Audio network, opening up a horizon of possibilities for West Park and a model for any environment that’s integrating Dante with 12G-SDI or HDMI 2.0 IO.
Oates became one of the early users of AJA’s Dante AV 4K-T and 4K-R, the bridge that united West Park’s existing Canon XA cameras and Roland V-60HD 12G-SDI switcher with the Dante Audio network
The initial application—to allow artists in the greenroom to see video and hear audio cues from the stage—opened the door. “In conversations with AJA about Dante AV with its low latency, embedding and dis-embedding of audio, my mind started to see the bigger picture,” Oates says. “We could pull in the FOH mix and put it anywhere we want, the green room, the classrooms, and then, hang on, we can use the broadcast room in different ways, we can do overflow spaces, we can support events like graduation, we could bring in the music department…”
Armed with the AJA transmitter and receiver, Oates could serve the school’s media career technical education (CTE) goals in an integrated way and give students access to modern products and solutions. The dedicated Dante AV network also gave Oates more local choices without having to impose on the district’s IT network; Dante AV will influence the rest of the buildouts and make performance, broadcast, streaming, and music more connected and flexible.
It’s an ideal environment to educate students on networked systems and the synergy among media disciplines. The students have access to a wide variety of professional grade sources and equipment including the Canon XAs and Roland mixer, wireless mics, Renkus Heinz speakers, Yamaha CL desks as well as a range of lighting, control, and wiring gear. The ability to network these sources across the various campus spaces provides the crucial platform for future media makers who will enter a professional media landscape where a high level of networked connection and interoperability is expected.
As Oates learned more about the possibilities of Dante AV (and the appeal of Dante Controller) he took advantage of Dante certification and feels well on his way to not only operate the media platform but use it to educate students on networked AV in general and Dante in particular. In this way, the infrastructure becomes more than support and becomes a teaching tool.
