Echo360 Cubed

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.

4 comments


1 James Richardson { 09.25.09 at 8:48 am }

Hi Ammar, have you used Echo 360? We are have tried several approaches to podcasting lectures (built in Powerpoint audio capture, add in video capture etc.) There are alway s issue with audio pick up etc. Jim


2 davidp { 09.27.09 at 4:36 pm }

There are a number of technologies of this genre, including ProfCast.

http://www.profcast.com

Each has its own unique style and attributes, favoring either pick up from the lecture theatre or from a laptop, as noted in your review.

The big issue is as you noted, whether faculty believe they want to be a part of this sort of exposure in a public Internet space. However, iTunesU and YouTube/edu are demonstrating that there is marketing potential in this sort of play, attracting students to a particular school or course based on the quality or level of engagement shown by instructors.


3 Ammar Al-Attiyat { 09.28.09 at 12:27 am }

Yes James, I did try it since it’s one of our products portfolio that we offer in the Middle East market (this is not a sales pitch, instructors told us to select the product we know 🙂 !!
You can visit this page to check the expected output of such a product;
http://www.echo360.com/showcase/


4 Ammar Al-Attiyat { 09.28.09 at 12:45 am }

Thank you David for your comment, seems ProfCast a nice tool with very reasonable price for those wishing to capture the instructor laptop, mainly.

My note regarding exposure, I personally faced with a couple of our prospects, and I expect it’s more related to the cultural issues here. Some instructors fear they get evaluated by their peers and management if they get exposed !!

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