Category — Mod03:The Global Learning Technologies Marketplace

RE:  ZOHO WIKI FOR EDUCATION (A service provided by ZOHO Wiki)

http://wiki.zoho.com/Zoho-Wiki-For-Education.html

FACE 1: MARKET FOCUS

ZOHO Wiki for Education is intended for public schools (K-12) and higher education (college and university).

FACE 2: TYPES OF OFFERINGS

ZOHO Wiki for Education is a learning and content management system, providing schools with space to design interactive, on-line courses for students.  Here, teachers would develop virtual classrooms so that students and teachers can remain connected outside the physical classroom.  As well, ZOHO Wiki for Education provides post-secondary institutions with space to allow (a) college graduates to share information and to build knowledge, (b) research students to collaborate on reports and to share research findings, and (c) faculty members to design course curriculum.

FACE 3: THE BUYER

ZOHO Wiki for Education is for the typical public school market and for higher education situations.

FACE 4: GLOBAL MARKETS

ZOHO Wiki has global markets in India (an “Asian” country), the US (an Anglophone country), and internationally: http://www.zoho.com/contact.html

However, this does not mean that ZOHO Wiki for Education specifically is available in all global markets.

FACE 5: DEVELOPMENT OF THE MARKET

It seems as though the markets of the US, Canada, Japan, and India support the import of content and infrastructure:

http://www.zoho.com/in-the-news.html (Press Releases)

http://www.zoho.com/zoho-in-the-news.html (ZOHO in the News)

http://www.zoho.jp/ (Japanese ZOHO Wiki Site)

http://www.zoho.com/awards.html (ZOHO Awards)

However, for ZOHO Wiki for Education may only apply in the Anglophone countries and possibly in Japan and India.

FACE 6: LEARNING TECHNOLOGY COMPETITION WITH OTHER FORMS OF LEARNING

ZOHO Wiki for Education works with a well-developed learning system in that this e-learning service/product is designed to enrich and to enhance the teaching-learning process by providing e-learning space for, but not limited to, collaboration, research, communication, showcasing, and participation.

face one – MARKET FOCUS

A little about CambridgeSoft.com  and its ChemDraw program:

CambridgeSoft is the leading supplier of Internet browser and webserver based life science desktop software, enterprise solutions, chemical databases and consulting services to the biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and chemical industries.

CambridgeSoft offers a complete line of desktop software for chemists including ChemDraw, the industry standard for chemical structure drawing and analysis.

Cambridge Soft introduced, on August 17, 2009, an e-Learning course for new users of ChemDraw software.  The software program is described below.

The * ChemDraw Ultra 12.0 Suite
by CambridgeSoft
Media: Download for Macintosh

Cost is $2330 USD (offered at academic pricing of $890)

http://scistore.cambridgesoft.com/ScistoreProductPage.aspx?ItemID=5548

face two – TYPES OF OFFERINGS

The e-Learning course that I am focusing on is a complimentary product to the purchasers of the ChemDraw software program.

CambridgeSoft offers prepackaged courseware and online training to support that courseware.

It provides online instructions (delivered in modules) as well as an assessment of certification at the end of the course.  You are given access for one full year to ChemDraw Basic e-Learning Course @ $250 USD per individual license (offered at scistore.cambridgesoft.com @ $150).

ChemDraw Basic E-Learning Course

Media: Online

http://scistore.cambridgesoft.com/ScistoreProductPage.aspx?ItemID=5837

face three –WHO IS THE BUYER?

Interested clients include Students, Educators, and Government Employees in the Chemistry / Biology fields.  This particular online course caters to new users of the ChemDraw packaged courseware.  They also offer bulk uploads  – for many students from one organization seeking access to the course.

This could be used by all the teachers in the science department of one school, or perhaps it would be a district initiative to get the program for use at all the schools in all Science programs.  Not only could it be used as an instructional enhancement, but could allow students to work on chemical models in 3-dimensional space.  The e-learning program would instruct the teachers and students alike, on how to use the tools in the ChemDraw software.  In industry, such as the Ministry of the Environment, analysts would use the software for their lab write-ups in their analyses of samples.  The e-learning software would appeal to Ministry labs inplementing the ChemDraw program for the first time, in order to train all scientists on staff as to the effective use of the software application.

face four – GLOBAL MARKETS

CambrigeSoft has offices in the US, Europe (including Germany and France) and Asia Pacific.

They offer support in English, German, French and Japanese.

So CambridgeSoft is catering to Wired Anglophone Countries, European countries that speak English, as well as a few European countries that require translation.  They also market to Asian Countries with quality Internet access, specifically in this case Japan.  This would also appeal to special situation such as military or marine use for scientists in those fields.

face five – DEVELOPMENT OF THE MARKET

The e-Learning that CambridgeSoft is offering is an export oriented Learning Technology.  It is designed to support the global customers of its prepackaged courseware.  This is a well established company with a lengthy line of software products that are being used internationally.

face six – Learning Technology competing with other forms of learning?

This Learning Technology works with a well developed system.  This company sets the bar for other learning technologies of this category.  The development of this e-Learning media download shows expanded support for its customer to use their prepackaged software for effectively.  It will draw more customers into the purchase of its software products, if they know that they will be supported by tutorial programs.  This learning technology is more effective than instructor-led training since the customer will seek help for the particular application that they are employing, and will want to refer back to the instructional software many times, and any order that makes sense to them.

Faronics Insight ©  http://www.faronics.com/html/Insight.asp is a networked computer software that can be used to train and monitor computer use across multiple workstations.

Face 1: Market Focus Insight targets the educational and business markets

Public school, higher ed and business training.

Face 2: Types of Offerings

Content and Infrastucture

Face 3: Who is the Buyer?

Bought regionally (provincial school boards, municipal libraries) or at a faculty level in universities and colleges. Large business may also be a buyer.

Face 4 – Global Markets

Wired Anglophone and European market with language skills

Face 5 – Development of the Market

Market Supports Import of Content and Infrastructure Category.

Face 6 – Learning Technology Works With a Well-Developed Learning System

Interestingly this program is a piece of tech that facilitates tech ed  and is therefore a self fulfilling niche. It requires networked workstation and IT personnel to help set up and  troubleshoot, but the software is quite user friendly.

The Insight software not only allows for live multi-workstation demos but students/learner peer present and can pose questions on the fly, in an anonymous fashion if so chosen. I see this as an extremely valuable tool for knowledge building communities.

Smartboard Cubed

Smart Technologies, the maker of the Smartboard, was founded in 1987. They create interactive whiteboards, interactive pen displays, interactive digital signage, wireless slates and software. The interactive whiteboards are becoming commonplace in today’s classroom.

Face 1: Type of Market

Smart Technologies supplies Smartboards and other interactive technologies to every level of educational or corporate training.

Face 2: Type of Offerings

Their main offering is the Smartboard interactive whiteboard. This comes bundled with Notebook 10 software. The whiteboard is connected to a pc which it controls by using touch (human hand, electronic pen etc). The company provides training for their product in the form of online tutorials, videos, manuals and webinars.

Face 3: Who is the buyer?

Smartboards are typically bought by individual schools and school districts. Some school districts are purchasing this product and putting them in every classroom in certain schools while other districts are leaving the purchase decision to the individual schools.

Face 4: Global Markets

Smart Technologies is presently concentrating their efforts on the English speaking ‘wired’ countries. Given its ties to Intel and Microsoft it is easy to imagine them expanding globally.

Face 5: Market Development

The North American and English speaking European markets would support this product. Worldwide they account for more than 53% of all such devices sold. In North America their market share is 62%.

Face 6: Learning Technology Integration

The Smartboard is becoming more and more common in today’s classroom. It is replacing blackboards, whiteboards, maps, charts and other visual teaching aids. Its interactive nature allows students to quickly and easily interact with the technology.

NGRAIN is an electronic training development company which specializes in 3D simulation technologies.  More specifically, NGRAIN has focused on equipment training programs, virtual task training and maintenance support systems using interactive equipment simulations.

Many of their products and services take the form of interactive, explodeable 3D representations of complex machinery and equipment such as aircraft engines, military weapons or off-shore oil rigs.  Their goals are to accelerate training, increase first-time performance, minimize downtime, streamline operations and optimize worker performance in general.

Face 1 – Market Type

To date NGRAIN has focused on the training needs of government, military and corporate training needs.  NGRAIN’s customers include all branches of the United States and Canadian militaries, as well as leading manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, Standard Aero, Northrop Grumman, and CAE.

Face 2 – Type of Offering

NGRAIN’s focus is to provide consulting, designing and development services to their clients.  They create 3D training solutions by consulting with the client and designing models, applications and courses that are deliverable over average computer systems as opposed to custom or expensive workstations.

Although the creation of custom models and application is where they began, NGRAIN has also developed a number of “off-the-shelf” solutions that can be implemented with simple technical and training data provided by the customer.

Face 3 – Who is the buyer?

NGRAIN’s business model is based on a corporation or government entity purchasing the content for the learner.

Face 4 – Global Market

NGRAIN has focused on two global markets: wired Anglophone countries and special (military/maritime) situations.  They have had no major issues reaching these markets and have made significant progress in the North American Market both in the private and public sector.

Face 5 – Market Development

I would say that the market NGRAIN caters to is highly developed.  Large Western corporations, military and government agencies are among some of the earliest adopters of educational technology used for training.  This market is not only well established but has fairly deep pockets and the justification for accurate, high-quality training such as 3D simulations and interactive scenarios.  The potential costs of downtime in these markets are often very large and extend beyond the financial to include the safety and well-being of those trained.

Face 6 – Learning Technology Integration

NGRAIN focuses on content development but has made strides in meshing their content with established learning systems.  Many of their materials are designed to fit within established learning management systems or be delivered along with traditional training methods.

This company does not wish to replace traditional training methods such as hands-on time with equipment, traditional class-based learning or on-the-job training but provide a new, supplemental view of equipment and tasks which is unavailable any other way.

Echo360 is a hardware and software solution to capture any classroom lecture and convert it to a podcast, video or rich media to be retrieved by students from the school web site, portal, LMS, iTunes or even as RSS feedback.

Face 1 – Market Focus

Echo360 has a very clear focus on the Higher Education market. I believe this comes as a natural result from competition between academic institutes to offer innovative alternatives for students missing any class lecture or just want to revise the lecture as whole or selective essential elements.

Face 2 – Types of Offering

A clear infrastructure solution that is based on a hardware component – named the capturing appliance – which can be integrated with smart classroom equipments (podiums, smart board, document readers, audio/video peripherals) and the instructor laptop to capture the whole lecture experience. Supportive software application servers then handle the capture processing (converting to different publishing options) and then the streaming part.

Company also offers another nice solution called the “Personal Capture” where you can run your lecture from your laptop wherever you are, and this software will capture what’s on the screen together with the audio narration and your video if you’ve your web cam on.

Face 3 – Who is the buyer?

Another clear “Learning Bought for Learner” typical situation. Within the campus, people in charge of smart classrooms/eLearning technology purchases are the target decision makers.

Face 4 – Global Markets

The company had so far achieved quite an impressive track with clear achievements in the US market, in addition they have clientele from all other continents (except for South America)

Although they have developed localized versions of their application, but I think the reason for the global success is product’s user friendliness. Once it’s installed by the campus IT (who normally are OK with English based products in case their local language is not there), the end user (classroom instructor) will not need to do anything except step in the classroom and deliver his/her lecture. (the software has a scheduling module)

Face 5 – Development of the market

This products is built around special “patent” technology, this allows it to enter almost all markets and not only those which supports import. Local competition is rare and the demand is there.

Face 6 – Learning Technology Competing with Other Forms of Learning

The core essence of this product is based on a live classroom lecture (classical type of f2f learning), so the model here I would say; “eLearning Works With A Well-Developed Learning System”. Although, in some – well, may be rare – cases, the product faces resistance from faculty member who just don’t like the idea of being “captured”  and exposed in such a semi-public way.

I take global resources to include European ones as well.

Here’s a list of top 20.

http://www.vccafe.com/2008/11/12/top-20-entrepreneurial-startup-resources-europe/

CASUS Cubed

Face One: Market Focus

CASUS In.struct is a system developed in Germany beginning in 1994. It currently combines an authoring tool, player and learner tracking to create and deliver online cases for undergraduate and continuing medical education to help prospective physicians practice making diagnosis and other decisions about patients. It’s market focus is higher education and training related to continuing education.
Who we are. CASUS. 2009. Retrieved September 23 from
http://www.instruct.de/en/WerSindWir/index.html

Face Two: Types of Offerings

CASUS In.struct is primarily an infrastructure provider offering an authoring tool software, some guides on how to use it to create case content, and a server to host the player and the cases created by the customer. The system has been developed to the extent that CASUS has several licenses for different uses of the system. An authoring license allows the customer to create cases on CASUS. The course license allows the grouping of several cases under a course administration tool which provides detailed assessment information on each student user. An Exam license allows the use of the cases as exams for testing students online, and a faculty model license is an arranged customization of CASUS In.struct at a negotiated cost.

Face 3: Who is the Buyer?

The buyers of CASUS In.struct are notably not medical students – not the end users. The buyers appear to be all in higher education or continuing education and are either medical faculty, medicine related programmes or departments.

Face 4: Global Markets

CASUS has clients both wired anglophone countries and “european” countries with language skills. The first clients were in Germany, and then new clients were established in North America. Most notably, a slight customization was dubbed CLIPP (Computer-assisted Learning in Pediatrics Program) and the 31 or more cases developed in it are in use by over 80 medical schools in the United States and Canada.

CASUS Projects. CASUS. 2009. Retrieved September 23 from
http://www.casus.eu/index.php?article_id=22&clang=1

Face 5: Development of the Market

It appears that clients in Germany, Europe, and North America comprise a market that supports import of content and infrastructure. That they buy licenses to use the German server hosted system suggests that they support importing the infrastructure, and the sharing of content in the form of cases created by different clients and contributed to CLIPP in North America suggests that clients in the United States and Canada are willing to import content.

Face 6: Learning Technology Competing with Other Forms of Learning

The medical schools in Germany and North America already have well developed learning systems in the form of instructor-led courses. However, they are under pressure to achieve competencies in a growing curriculum as, for example, new illnesses, clinical treatments, technologies, and pharmacology are added each year. Many schools are under pressure to increase enrollments as there is a shortage of physicians and medical faculty to train them. Consequently, there is a little of all three levels of competition with other forms of learning. In some instances and aspects the cases are readily accepted into the existing mix of learning technologies which tend to be teacher led. In other instances, for lack of lecturers or scheduled class time, cases are used for independent study. In a third instance, the use of online cases is imposed on faculty and students who prefer lecture delivered content instead of problem-based learning or independent study.

PBworks, formally called PBwiki, is a collaboration service that has taken advantage of the growth in popularity of wikis. Their website claims: “PBworks is the world’s largest provider of hosted business and educational workspaces. We host over 800,000 workspaces, serve millions of users per month, and 96% of PBworks business users would recommend PBworks to a friend.”

Face 1 – Market Focus

I actually had a little difficulty with this. What is their market focus? Public schools, higher education, or corporate training needs? Their service seems blended. Although, their website does indicate that their major markets would be higher education and corporate consumers. PBworks has separate services, such as “Project Edition” and “Campus Edition”, which seems to support this multi-market ambition.

Face 2 – Types of Offering

PBworks is mainly a service providing a product and infrastructure for managing course and students content; although, wikis can be used for numerous other things, including asynchronous communication.

Face 3 – Who is the buyer?

I see two options here, being:

• “Learning bought for Learner” – perhaps, for example, it is mainly for higher education courses where the instructors wish to include wikis in the course; and
• “Learning Bought Centrally” – perhaps, for example, a university or schools district has adopted the idea of wikis and wishes to provide this type of learning environment for the entire institution.

This seems evident in the various packages that they provide.

Face 4 – Global Markets

PBworks is mainly focused on “Wired Anglophone Countries, although there is a small market in other areas.

Face 5 – Development of the market

PBwork saw a niche in the market. MediaWiki and Wikispaces would be the two other major competitors; however, PBworks, perhaps seeing the growth of wikis in education and corporate use, simplified the enduser’s experience with wikis. The international market freely imports content and infrastructure, although I’m not aware of many (if any) local companies that produce wiki packages.

Face 6 – Learning Technology Competing with Other Forms of Learning

PBworks would fit under the category: “Learning Technology Substitutes for Others Forms of Learning”. For one thing, their product and service may have to compete with the various LMSs, other Social Media platforms, such as NING, blogging platforms and other services, such as Google Docs. But that’s just “eLearning”. PBworks would have to compete with face-to-face appracs to collaborative approaches to learning.

Originally, known as PBWiki, PBWorks is an online collaborative environment that allows users to create wikis fairly easily. It operates on the “freemium” model (free low level features plus a fee for higher levels that offer more features) and uses its own proprietary software which seems to evolve and improve year by year. When it was first released, it was markedly simpler to use than other wiki programs and has added more functionality such as more stringent security measures and audit logs which holds appeal for commercial applications. I have some experience with the company/product through doing a wiki for a History 12 class. A great product/service that I feel educators should explore given the time. So…

Face 1: Market Focus-(K-12, higher education, commercial)

PBWorks has and is being used by all three of the above categories. Save lower level grades (which might not be able to use computers until a certain age), this product has huge appeal for middle school and high school, universities/colleges, and businesses as well. According to their website, commercial ventures are their main focus with the claim to fame that they have users in half of the Fortune 500 list.

 Face 2: Types of Offerings-services rendered/product description

Obviously, the company offers workspaces for individuals, companies, cohorts etc to collaborate on various projects or personal quests. Simply, a wiki is a set of interlinked web pages that allows the user(s) to edit and share information in particular field or application. These wikis allow for different levels of access and editing/deletion abilities so as to preserve the integrity of the work being done. One is able to navigate fairly easily through a number of pages in specific folders and users can leave comments and insert both links to other pages/sites and actual multimedia files.

 Face 3: Who is the Buyer?

The buyer fits into seven different categories including:

 Master Pricing Guide

 The basic/free level appeals to individuals and those needing only basic services. The “Public” level is aimed at libraries/institutions while the differences between the Classroom and Campus editions is the number of users and number of workspaces. Standard, Legal and Project editions all allow for unlimited storage measured in Gigabytes. The differences between all seven categories is fairly substantial. For more go to:

http://pbworks.com/content/pricing-overview

 Face 4 – Global Markets

According to PBWorks, the only language that it is offered in is English (main business language) “PBworks itself (tools, help, support) is not available in languages other than English.” However, it utilizes Unicode meaning that any language that you can type in from your computer will be displayed in the workspace pages. So, you can use other languages but if you need help it is going to be in English. Customers include companies from Australia, the US, the UK, South Korea, Canada and China. A company like Bracewell and Giuliani has ten offices around the world and 450 attorneys. Basically, the nature of the product/service makes it very attractive for anyone with Internet access that wants a collaborative experience.

 Face 5 – Development of the Market

Arguably, PBWorks is the giant in the wiki business. Over 50 000 businesses subscribe, they host over 900 000 workspaces and millions of users utilize it each day. According to various sources, the company does spend time/money developing new features that reflect what their customers are telling them or are based on observed trends.

 Face 6 – Integrating the product in the education system

The product itself is relatively easy to use and includes very substantial and well developed webinars and technical support – that is a strength of the company. Hardware needed to run this is minimal and speed of the internet connection is not absolutely crucial. The playing of multimedia might be an issue. Getting students to use this would not be hard as it imitates blogging in some ways; however, some might feel self conscious posting comments/ideas using their own names. Cost is quite low and can be free unless many features are needed. Evaluating user contributions can be eased by paying more for a higher level edition.