Simplicity

 One new finding I uncovered during my annual rounds at the ISTE educational conference was the arrival of Recordex _USA on the national document camera scene. This company features a new “SimplicityCam Series,” which starts at $225, yet sports many desirable features. Although some of these features are only available in Windows-compatible environments, I felt that the most intriguing  features (presented in order of uniqueness) were the following:

The Snapset Creator. This feature enables the teacher to put any number of pages down one at a time (for example, a 20-page science lab packet), hit a single button, and instantly generate a 20-page PDF  that can be emailed, posted online, or reused in the future. The Snapset Creator can also capture every document shown during an entire class and, at the end of the class, create a PDF of every document/object reviewed to send home to absent students.  I am certain educators will love this capability.  Here is a video demonstrating that feature.

Large Viewing Area. Two of the Simplicity models offer a large viewing area, with the ability to view up to 17.5” x 23.5” document or subject. This enables the teacher to easily display a children’s picture book, a large student project, over-sized realia, or even an outsized map.

AnnoZoom. You can annotate live images or videos, and then perform real-time zoom-in with your subject. The annotation remains.

Other positive features of this document camera include picture in picture video conferencing and an optional microscope adapter, just to name a few.

The Recordex simplicity series includes three doc cam models: the SC5i+, the SC5z, and the SC5z Duet. (A sample spec sheet is included here.) Besides its advantages for the regular classroom, this document camera offering goes a long way to support both the “flipped classroom” and the distance learning classroom. You can learn more about Recordex document camera options at this link.