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Lecture Capture Comes to Blackboard Learn Platform
Echo360's lecture capture technologies are making their way onto the Blackboard Learn platform.
Echo360 provides a lecture capture platform called EchoSystem. It's designed to capture lectures automatically and encode them into a variety of formats for distribution across multiple media, including podcasts, rich media formats, and streaming video. It's compatible with classroom presentation tools, such as whiteboards, tablet PCs, and document cameras, and it supports publishing to learning management systems, Apple's iTunes U, and other outlets. It also offers closed captioning support.
Through a partnership between the two companies, Echo360's lecture capture tools are being integrated into Blackboard Learn, allowing users to record, edit, and publish lectures and other presentations "with a click of the mouse," according to Blackboard.
"Lecture capture has become make or break for our students to access their education," said Loren Farr, coordinator of media and distance learning at Tulsa Community College, in a statement released by Blackboard this week. "Students would have trouble attaining their degree if not for the flexibility to review or see streaming lecture materials on their own time."
According to Blackboard, the company's higher education customers in the United States and Canada "will receive a limited number of licenses for personal lecture capture at no cost. The service offered through the Blackboard partnership with Echo360 works with any Webcam-enabled personal computer and does not require any additional investments in software or hardware infrastructure."
A Blackboard Building Block is available now for free download.
Further information, including a link to the download, can be found on Blackboard's site here.