BainPOP Cubed

BrainPOP describes itself as a creator of animated curriculum-based content which helps to support students and educators through engaging materials.  BrainPOP offers lesson plans, video tutorials, quizs, games for most topics and curriculum componenets.

Here is sample video to get started…

Face 1: Market Focus

The market focus is the K-12 public school system.  BrainPOP offers curriculum connections from k-12 in Spanish and English.

Face 2: Types of Offerings

BrainPOP is a content developer that create the curriculum based activities that can be access once a subscription our licensing fee is paid.

Face 3: Who is the Buyer?

BrainPOP has done an excellent job in regard to addressing the various levels of purchasing.  By offering a variety of purchasing agreement BrainPOP access the level of learning bought for learner and learning bought centrally.  Here is a list of the option: school wide, district wide, media lab, classroom, home school, family, or a virtual subscription.

Face 4 – Global Markets

The United States of America and wired Anglophone countries are the primary global markets.  Although the content is offered in Spanish this is more for the Spanish speakers within the United States.  As for the content it is primarily American centric in that the social studies and history aspects are in coordination with American curriculum organizers.  The other aspects are more generally applicable and to offer a wide variety of topics to be explored.

Face 5 – Development of the Market

From my understanding of BrainPOP it would be situated within a market that supports export oriented learning and substitutions of imports.  The American curriculum would make it better suited than perhaps a British or Canadian company offering the same products, but could be used in both of those countries as well.

Face 6 – Learning Technology Competing with Other Forms of Learning

BrainPOP works well with a well-developed learning system.  In fact, BrainPOP is used as a way to reinforce the already exciting system and not replace it.

BrainPOP is a great resource I recommend trying a free trial….

I have many email addresses because of this feature…..

Noah

Here is my attempt at “Elluminate Cubed”. I have used Elluminate many times over the past couple of years and it grows on me each time I use it.

http://www.elluminate.com/

FACE 1: MARKET FOCUS

Elluminate provides web, video, and audio solutions for online learning and according to Elluminate.com they serve “more than 600 million annual web-collaboration minutes to over 7 million teachers and students located in 170 different countries”.

FACE 2: TYPES OF OFFERINGS

Elluminate has several offerings that are explained in detail through the links below including:

Elluminate Learning Suite™. – a full package of products

Elluminate Live!® features voice over the Internet, interactive functionality, upports multiple platforms and low-bandwidth connectivity.

Elluminate Next>™ bundle combines Elluminate Plan!™ and Elluminate Publish!™

Elluminate vSpaces™ single-room configurations of Elluminate Live!

Elluminate Bridges a tool that provides integration with learning and content management systems.

Elluminate VCS™ is an affordable  multipoint video collaboration product for desktop users.

LearnCentral™ is a social learning network for education, sponsored by Elluminate.

FACE 3: THE BUYER

School Districts or governing educational groups, individual educators and business.

If you are a BC educator you can have free access provided by Learnnowbc. A single meeting can be booked  or you can reserve a long-term meeting room for up to one year. Click here for more information: http://www.learnnowbc.ca/lnbcresources/elluminate/

FACE 4: GLOBAL MARKETS

As the internet expands and computer access improved within education there is potential for classrooms to meet and connect globally. This meeting platform allows for easy interactivity that incorporates, audio, video, text and more.

FACE 5: DEVELOPMENT OF THE MARKET

There are several reviews and articles about Elluminate:

http://www.elluminate.com/press/articles.jsp

The company is located in Calgary, Alberta and Pleasanton, California and claims to Ellumiate claims, to be the choice of “ Apple Computer, California State University, Florida Virtual School, Georgetown University, K12 Inc., London Knowledge Lab, Los Angeles Unified School District, Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Novell, Queen’s University, Royal Veterinary College, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, and many more.”

According to their website they are the one of “Deloitte’s 50 Fastest Growing Technology Companies and is positioned in the Visionaries Quadrant of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Conferencing, 2009”.

FACE 6: LEARNING TECHNOLOGY COMPETITION WITH OTHER FORMS OF LEARNING

The Elluminate services are very useful and have great potential in the market. A set back (or competition) is the every growing development of free Web 2.0, & 3.0 tools. Many of these tools provide similar functions including online chat, whiteboard, and texting capabilities. As second struggle that the company will encounter is convincing educators to change their practice to incorporate virtual meeting spaces over face to face. Ellumiate has many market challenges and must keep current with the many emerging new technologies in order to survive.

Here is a short video found on Youtube introducing Elluminate:

I am not very familiar with any learning software but i have studied K12 a little. I will cube them. http://www.k12.com/

Face 1. Market

They are as their name suggests focused on the K12 educational market

Face 2. Offering

They offer mainly content. They have all the courses for students to do online learning K thru 12

Face 3. The buyer

K12 mainly sells to state governments in the US who then offfer it to their citizens as an option to state schooling. K12 is also getting a few students whose parents are buying the training for them, mainly american expats in countries with no american school offering.

Face 4. Global markets

K12’s largest market is in the US. They are now going overseas to families seeking an american education, i.e. countries with quality internet without translation but all over the world, asian countries, latin countries, middle eastern countries. So a large market in the U.S. and a much more pulverized market elsewhere.

Face 5. Development of the market

If we look at the specific market they are going after it is a market that supports import of content and infrastructure. These are foreigners who want an american education or americans abroad who are looking for an american education. If they decide to grow their market then it would have to be analized country by country.

Face 6. Learning technology competes with existing forms of learning. Both in the US as well as oversees the family decides if this is the best option for their children versus the state education in schools or the local offerings oversees.

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.