Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

New partnership expands video content management

Sterling Partners’ Education Opportunity Fund, a fund focused on partnering with purpose-driven companies and leaders who foster innovation within the education sector, announced today that it has invested in Panopto.

Panopto’s partnership with the Education Opportunity Fund will allow the company to build upon its position as a technology leader in video content management, recording, and live streaming, and will fuel Panopto’s plans for business expansion.

Founded in 2007, Panopto pioneered the categories of lecture capture and enterprise video content management. Today, the company offers a comprehensive video platform that enables a diverse set of organizations to capture and manage all of their video assets.…Read More

New developments enhance school video use

School video use has come a long way from the days when expensive video conferencing systems were required to connect students and experts in different locations.

Thanks to new advancements in video technology, students and teachers can hold live, face-to-face conversations with scientists in remote areas of the globe from whatever device they might own. Teachers can choose from a variety of free or low-cost tools to prepare video-based lessons that let them “flip” their classroom. And schools can use any number of products that make video editing and production more accessible for students.

School video use has come a long way from the days when expensive (and clunky) video conferencing systems were required to connect students and subject-matter experts in different locations.

Today, for instance, nearly 37,000 teachers from around the world are using Skype in the Classroom to link up with other classrooms through Skype, the free, Microsoft-owned service for making voice or video calls over the internet.…Read More

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Dell jumps into lecture capture

Seven in 10 students said using lecture capture helped improve their final course grades.

The proliferation of online courses and the flipped learning model has created demand in higher education for lecture capture systems, and officials at technology giant Dell said July 9 they might be able to meet that need.

Dell will bundle lecture capture hardware and software into its server infrastructure for colleges and universities after partnering with popular lecture-recording company Echo360.

Along with the usual batch of networking equipment, servers, and storage, colleges will now have access to Echo360’s lecture capture system, which is used on more than 500 campuses worldwide.…Read More

Professor’s ‘yawn’ rant offers a lesson in viral video

Even if lecture capture technology isn't used in a classroom, a student could record an embarrassing moment on a cell phone.

Cornell University Professor Mark Talbert’s search for a student who yawned during class was first seen by about 200 students. The recorded rant had been viewed 218,000 times on YouTube as of press time—and educators say it’s a reminder that anything said in a lecture hall these days can be held against you in the court of viral video.

Talbert, a senior lecturer in Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration, was recorded in a late October lecture searching the hall for a student who had yawned loudly in the middle of Talbert’s presentation.

Talbert asked the more than 200 students to identify the person who had yawned, adding that the “overly loud” yawning had become too frequent.…Read More

Online learning official: Lecture capture helps students ‘review, review, review’

Moloney said more UMass Lowell classrooms will have lecture capture systems soon.

Jacqueline Moloney wants college students to do less transcribing and more listening.

Moloney, executive vice chancellor and head of online learning at the University of Massachusetts Lowell campus, has overseen an effort to make lecture capture technology a standard feature in the university’s classrooms, along with a host of other technologies that can be tailored to fit instructors’ preferences.

Along with a suite of other technologies—digital document cameras and interactive LCD touch screens among them—about one-third of UMass Lowell’s classrooms have been equipped with lecture capture programs that, Moloney said, let students “review, review, review” by rewinding the video lectures and hashing over complex concepts.…Read More

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Students: Video lectures allow for more napping

More than half of students said streaming video lectures have improved their grades.
More than half of students said streaming video lectures have improved their grades.

College students gave video lectures high marks in a recent survey, although many students supported the technology because it freed up more time for napping and hanging out with friends.

And three in 10 said their parents would be “very upset” if they knew just how often their child missed class and relied on their course web site.

A majority of students who responded to the survey, conducted in August by audio, internet, and video conferencing provider InterCall, said they would only attend a live lecture if an exam were scheduled for that day, or to borrow notes from a classmate. The survey didn’t indicate the percentage of students who took this position.…Read More