Improve This!

Here's another open letter to document camera manufacturers everywhere. 

You're constantly improving your visualization products by increasing hardware features, capabilities, and performance. That's fine. But one area that seems to lag in the visualizer industry is its software.

Sometimes I think that the software that is packaged with many visualizers was created cheaply and without much forethought. Sometimes visualizer software has an archaic “look and feel”-- appearing like something created two decades ago; something not at all as appealing as the look and feel of modern websites or current software. (I served as a judge for Technology & magazine’s 2013 annual software awards and remain a current software reviewer for T&L and other journals, and I know when software has anachronistic look to it.)

Document camera manufacturers would do well to stop upgrading their hardware at such a brisk pace, and instead concentrate on their software interface. To date, the most attractive, easy-to-use, and fresh-looking controlling software interfaces for document cameras that I have worked with belong to these companies: Recordex, Lumens, and HoverCam. Software should not be an afterthought. Just sayin’

Three Things

What are the three most important ways you can use your classroom visualizer?

In the spirit of doing simple things that work when using document cameras in classrooms, here are three succinct ideas to remember and implement in your classroom:

Use Color

Don't step your document camera back to the days of overhead projectors! Use color to highlight, attract, organize or shape meaning into a lesson.

Use Immersive Images

Don't show small pictures, cartoons or object. Magnify them to the point that they fill your entire classroom screen. Full-screen, rich, immersive images really hook students, drawing them into the learning at hand.

Involve the Students

Step away. Imagine ways for your students to use the visualizer. The better you get at this tool, the more the kids will use it--not you!

Say It Simply

In a past post, Visualize Better Messaging, I warned about the kind of technical messaging coming from document camera manufacturers that will never reach into the hearts and minds of educational customers.  “Say it simply,” I argued.  I finally ran into an advertisement/promotional, (coming from Ken-a-Vision) that did messaging right (or at least without technical overkill). Look at their simple, core message, quoted below:

I'm the FlexCam 2, but my friends call me Kenny.  I help schools, like yours, unlock their teachers' existing curriculum on all their digital devices at once. I love helping teachers share their existing curriculum digitally with every student in their classroom…

You can get me set up and connect in minutes, and I work well at any grade level or class subject . Together, we can make the transition to a paperless, digital classroom easier and faster. If you want to make your tablets and laptops more than just digital textbooks, contact my friends at Ken-A-Vision. I know they'll be happy to tell you more about me…

What a great example of marketing to real customers!

A New Kid on the Block

The eInstruction ShareView

eInstruction, the audience response and interactive white board manufacturer recently entered the document camera market with a low-cost ($139), portable document camera offering.

Coupled with its Workspace Connect software, the ShareView document camera can not only display classroom resources, it can allow annotation via student mobile devices running their app.

Interestingly, when folded up, the ShareView can serve as a webcam for web conferencing or headshot recording.

Still, the document camera market is so crowded these days, it will be quite interesting to  see if this merely becomes a nice add-on to their interactive whiteboard and clickers ecosystem, or if it will be able to stand on its own.

Doc Cams in Online Teaching

I periodically conduct a short workshop featuring techniques and resources for using document cameras in support of online teaching. Here are some of the main advantages I like to discuss in these workshops:

Techniques

• Picture-in-picture synchronous teaching
• Doc-Casting
• Personalized assessment: voice and color-annotated feedback
• Scanning (e.g., PDF preparation)
• Digital stills
• Live demonstration toolset: presentation and annotation

Strategies

• Aiming at the Abstract: Visualization
• Use / Re-use (make it once, use it many times)
• Time-saving (efficiency)

Document cameras can do so much in support of online teaching—so much so that these devices should become a required part of the online instructor’s basic equipment toolkit. 

Visualize Better Messaging

At conferences, document camera companies often do a nice job with their exhibit hall booths, offering friendly and welcoming spaces for educators passing by. With their print messaging, not so much.

Here is the experiment I undertook: I procured the literature from each manufacturer’s table, reading each one through. The ‘featured’ sales messages were enough to scare an educator right back into their classrooms. Here’s a sampling of the offending core messaging I found in my pouch:

“[It’s] a great pass-through camera…”

“HDMI Input & Output – ideal for integration…”

“Perfect for retrofitting any room.”

“VGA/USB Dual-Mode”

And, of course, my favorite:

“[Now] UVC (USB video class compliant) with the latest CMOS 3.4 sensor…”

Whatever that means. These manufacturers need to understand that this style of “technical messaging” is gibberish to K-12 folks. Say it in English. Say it simply. Or talk about effective visual teaching. Come on—I know you folks—what’s with this? It looks like the technical department certainly beat the marketing heads on this one. Most of this seems written in the cryptic lexicon of university buyers or RFP junkies. Are you trying to sell to educational customers, or just advertising to outshine your competition? This type of technical messaging will never reach into the hearts and minds of educational customers. 

This message is tough love in nature, but you know I love you. Don’t you?

Fuzzy Wuzzy

Do you sometimes think your document camera displays a fuzzy image, not at all the high-definition quality you thought you were paid for?  I touched lightly on this problem in two previous posts: first in Lights-Camera-Action and then more recently in Call Me Crisp. But since then, I have discovered some more reasons why your classroom document camera may not offer the image quality you had hoped for. Almost all the issues are under your control, fortunately. Below find my troubleshooting list (helping you resolve this problem), with the newest findings added in color:

• The display surface can cause lack of focus. Test and compare different display surfaces to ensure the best and sharpest display possible. (Some wood-grained display tables, and even gray-topped tables, can cause document cameras to have problems. Images can be slightly out of focus or not as bright and sharp as desired.)
• Surface matting matters. Better display results are always achieved when I layer the teaching display surface with a mat, construction paper, or other contrasting flat background.  Experiment to find the best solution.
• Your document camera settings matter. You might already own a high-definition visualizer, but have the settings pushed to a lower resolution. For example, once I was demonstrating a new HD Recordex document camera in a teacher workshop, and I thought something was wrong with the image quality. Actually, I had mistakenly set this HD visualizer to a lower resolution level. I called the company and they immediately helped me catch my mistake. I had actually set it to one of the lower of six available resolution settings. 
• Legacy equipment matters. Your problem may be that your document camera is an older high-resolution device (720p), and not a high-definition visualizer at all. It’s only been the last couple of years that manufacturers have been producing high-def visualizers (defined as 1080p or greater). Perhaps it’s time to give your current document camera to someone who uses it less and invest in a new high-definition visualizer.
• Your classroom projector matters. I was presenting at the University recently, and found myself disgusted and embarrassed by the quality of the images my state-of-the-art high-def visualizer was offering.  After some troubleshooting, I realized that the problem was the classroom projector.  The projector in this university facility was so old that it degraded the quality of the images I was showing. Keep your eye out for this problem as well.

Doc Cams @ ISTE 2013

While the number of document camera companies exhibiting at the ISTE 2013 conference was down this year, offerings in visualizer features evidenced a small spike upwards. Here is a quick survey of new things happening in the world of document cameras at the ISTE 2013 conference, in blistering hot San Antonio:

HoverCam

Hovercam was featuring a new partnership with Zoom, offering a nice troika of document camera—video conferencing—remote collaboration that is hard to beat. Basically, they are combining forces to offer high-definition screen sharing, annotation, MP4 recording, and live conferencing for up to 25 participants—on any Mac, Windows, iOS or Android device.  The extensibility to mobile devices is noteworthy. They were also showing off their new HoverCam mini 5, which is smaller than a water bottle, but as powerful as the big boy visualizers.

QOMO

QOMO was on display with great enthusiasm, revealing their new visualizers, like the QD3900 and the nicely portable QPC70, with new HDMI input/output features. Basically, this allows schools to connect high-def devices to the document camera or connect the document camera itself to projectors or classroom displays that offer high-definition capabilities, like HD TVs.

Elmo

Elmo rolled out their UVC (USB video class compliant) TT-12i. That means it is able to stream video smoothly, enabling high-quality use in video conferencing, distance learning, and lesson recording.

IPEVO

IPEVO was highlighting their new VGA/USB Dual-Mode document camera, the VZ-1 HD. This feature allows the educator to bypass the computer, if necessary, and display directly through a projector. Nothing new, but a useful functions  in some school settings. What I liked better was the hard switch for selecting camera resolution.

An Open Letter

This is an open letter to visualizer manufacturers everywhere. I hope you are listening.

Your product—the classroom document camera—is a wonderful tool. We simply can’t live without it in a classroom. Many IT folks and administrators despise document cameras, but teachers love them.

But one of my pet peeves is something I that have seen both commoditize and degrade the digital camera market and other AV-product markets over the years. In an effort to stay relevant—to keep one step ahead of your competition—companies strive to constantly improve their products. There’s nothing wrong with that, I suppose. Or is there?

See it from our point of view. Features constantly changing. Overly rapid feature creep. Every six to twelve months. Perhaps a perceived advantage for your product over your competitors, but for schools it’s just frustrating. Schools feel the unwelcome ogle of forced obsolescence gawking over their shoulders. If the changes are too frequent, it’s enough to make them want to wait. Or enough to make them bemoan their past purchases and give up on future or replacement purchases.

The bottom line is that feature creep forces your marketing to focus on small gains, the trivial advantages over your competitors. What about featuring great teaching in your literature or booths? What about shouting the message of visual teaching and learning strategies? Why not emphasize the effectiveness of brain-based teaching, which really works?

My advice is this: slow your product improvement cycle down to two years, like other successful technology industries; create a sense of industry stability, making each new product announcement worth its weight in gold; and start talking less about features and more about what really matters—powerful visual teaching.

Color Me Effective

(Turn on your speakers, cue the mystery music here by clicking on the widget's play button, and then read on below)

Recently I was touring a regional middle school (Preston Middle School, Poudre School District in Colorado) and had quite a nice surprise as I passed by an actively engaged math classroom. The teacher was using a document camera to review a math problem. But this teacher was doing something right. Something I don’t see often in classrooms using document cameras. Something we need to see more of. Something quite simple, yet quite effective. Something that works.

He was using Color on his document camera to clarify the concept, to make the solution process more attention getting, more understandable. Color has been used to help students master difficult concepts in math dating back to the ancient Egyptians and Greeks. Why is it that some teachers use document cameras in the least effective fashion? In black and white? Start using Color with your document camera. Color works.

High-leverage Strategies

High-leverage Instructional Strategies

In recent years many schools have played close attention to the rich instructional strategies correlated with high achievement cited by Robert Marzano in What Works in Schools: Translating Research and Action. It is no surprise that the classroom document camera can serve as a friendly co-traveler in our effort to support many of Marzano's strategy suggestions, highlighted in bold below. The document camera enables us, in a richly visual way, to:

• highlight similarities and differences (classifying, comparing, contrasting, using metaphors, and employing analogies)
• model effective note taking (demonstrating, summarizing and distilling)
• display nonlinguistic representations (pictures, physical models, realia, graphic organizers, charts, and graphs)
• promote cooperation (team activities, small group problem solving)
• provide feedback (assessment as learning, assessment for learning)
• generate and test hypotheses (using visualized experiments)
• Launch questions and cues, or display advanced organizers

The classroom document camera is no featherweight in the important sport of full-contact learning—it’s a heavyweight contender.

VIZ Micro-Worlds

It’s one of my favorite things. It is always amazing how the document camera can bring unseen micro-worlds into your classroom. Whether using digital microscopes or specialized document cameras, imagine broadcasting high-definition images from your micro­scope or document camera to classroom iPads and even Android devices. Ken-a-Vision is one company that offers this unique type of educational visualization tool.

Check out this video:

Call Me Crisp

In this series I am hoping to cover three trends that I really like in the world of document cameras. I like that...

• document cameras are getting smaller 
• doc cams are turning colorful
• high-definition is providing a crisp viewing experience

Most visualizers now on the market are coming with high-definition cameras. The improvement is stark. The quality of images used for learning is nothing less than remarkable. 

Perhaps this trend helps explain some statements that were offered up in my last two visualizer presentations:

"These images are much nicer than what I get using the document camera I currently have in my classroom."

"This visualizer is better than any I have seen. What kind is it?"

These comments and questions really bring home the difference between the current generation of high-definition doc cams and the older generation of equipment that first made its way into schools some years ago. 

Perhaps this story will help clarify: I was recently using my visualizer as the primary camera for a live web conference with a colleague. We were doing some synchronous live conference testing using both Google+ Hangouts and the conferencing system built into our Canvas learning management system at the university. The colleague immediately noted the difference and remarked: "This was the best, most high-def image I  have ever seen on a live session." And she remarked that latency and frame rate were not adversely affected. I explained that the high-def visualizer was the reason why.

By the way, be forewarned that you might already own a High-Def visualizer, but have the settings pushed to a lower resolution. For example, once I was demonstrating a new HD Recordex document camera in a teacher workshop, and I thought something was wrong with the image quality. Actually, I had mistakenly set this HD visualizer to a lower resolution level. I called the company, and they immediately helped me catch my mistake. I had set it to one of the lower of six available resolution settings. 

My bad...

Color Me Wonderful

In this series I am hoping to cover three trends that I really like in the world of document cameras. I like that...

• document cameras are getting smaller 
• doc cams are turning colorful
• high-definition is providing a crisp image viewing experience

Let's face it. I like pretty. It breaks up the monotony of life. Kids like color, too. Color matters, methinks. In particular, two visualizer products are really making their mark by turning on their colors.

The first noteworthy product in this regard comes from Ken-a-Vision. Look at the beautiful colors of their Vision Viewer: 

When I saw this display at a recent conference, I thought of a flower garden. In this case, a visualizer garden. A learning garden. Definitely the kind of visualizer that I want to plant in the learning garden of my classroom.

The second product is from Elmo. I love the subtle colorations of this visualizer.  Three flavors. Not so bright, and oh-so-easy on the eyes. 

Classrooms can be pretty places too, you know.

Small Is Beautiful (Part 2)

In this series I am covering three trends that I really like in the world of document cameras. I like that...

• document cameras are getting smaller (this post is part 2)
• doc cams are turning colorful
• high-definition is providing a crisp image viewing experience

This second posting continues our focus on the fascinating topic of small-form-factor document cameras. 

The small-form-factor document camera is a full-featured doc cam that meets some very important needs in classrooms today. It's not just a gimmick or a cool toy. Think about these important uses:

• itinerant teachers moving from school to school, who can now easily take a document camera with them from school to school
• traveling teachers and professors moving from classroom to classroom, who can now easily transport a document camera wherever they need it
• teachers and professors with very limited desk, table, or cart space in classrooms; these new devices offer extremely small footprints, conserving scarce and valuable desktop real estate
• teachers and professors with very limited work space in their homes or offices
• teachers and professors who must travel light to present at conferences and seminars
• an instant scanner, wherever you may be
• for virtual office hours, wherever you may find yourself

 

When you think about it, small-form-factor document cameras suddenly make great sense. Gotta have one!

Small is Beautiful (1)

In this series I am hoping to cover three trends that I really like in the world of document cameras. I like that...

• document cameras are getting smaller 
• doc cams are turning colorful
• high-definition is providing a crisp image viewing experience

Our first posting will focus on the fascinating topic of small-form-factor document cameras. Here are the three best examples on the market:

The Elmo MO-1 Visual Presenter

Here is their Elmo website for some additional insight and information.





Please view this short video that will give you a better look at this tool.

The All-In-Learning Portable Document Camera

Here is their website for some additional insight and information.







Below please find a short video I took, in my simple effort to give you a better look at this tool.

The Hover Cam Mini 5 

Here is their Mini 5 website for some additional insight and information.







Last, below please find a short video I took, in my simple effort to give you a better look at this tool.

Grants, Contests, and More

It’s hard to muster your visual teaching kung fu without a document camera of your own! Use these opportunities to make things happen for your classroom. I will keep you posted as other companies step up to the plate for schools. Here are the only opportunities I can find for the Spring of 2013 to win or earn a document camera or other freebie for your school or classroom:

1. ELMO Lesson Idea Contest (Contest extended through the end of April)
2. Recordex Free Wireless Tablet Offer (for the cost of shipping, when you buy an entry-level document camera/one per school; use the promotion code SCE12 with any online retailer)
3. Samsung Superhero Competition (Deadlines May 31 and November 30)
4. Samsung Lesson Plan Contest (Deadline May 1)

For now, I want to give kudos to the companies above. But let’s just say that document camera companies should do much more than they are doing if they want to reach schools. Document camera companies should offer regular and creative contests, grants, and freebies to struggling schools. Once a school or department gets a successful implementation going, it is certain to spread. Sometimes they just need to prime the pump. 

Stop n' Go

Stop n' Go      Pas a Pas      Step by Step

Is this a type of document camera technology –or not? Is it a type of Doc-Casting –or not? Decide for yourself. 

 

And please consider two important points: 

1. It's April Fool's Day.
2. This is a real product. See their Pas a Pas website.

The Death of the Doc Cam

In our last post, we featured the appearance of the “iPad as document camera” phenomenon in the educational marketplace. At about the same time, a friend who works in the document camera industry wrote a disturbing thought to me: “You are witnessing the end of the document camera,” he declared. Is it that simple? Will the classroom document camera met a premature demise? Will iPads conquer the visualizer universe? 

I don’t think so. 

Here are ten reasons why:

1. Document cameras can cost much less than an iPad.
2. A longer warranty (5 years for a visualizer, 90+ days for an iPad or tablet)
3. Interactive software features (and controls)
4. Gooseneck/arm flexibility for the limited space on teachers’ desktops or tables.
5. Compare the portability for traqelling teachers of an iPad mount with a small form factor visualizer: no contest.
6. Built-in lamps—ease of auto-focus: Choose one.
7. No charging—no battery life: Choose one.
8. USB media storage slot or SD card slot or USB cable for saving: Choose one.
9. Try hooking up a microscope adapter to an iPad.
10. Why would I waste the capabilities of an iPad by dedicating it to mimic the functionality of an inexpensive dedicated doc cam? Sure, I have extra iPads to spare. 

Still, these new iPad mounts are fun. They are interesting. But they are not transformational in themselves. Frankly, I see it as another business idea, a “next-up” gimmick to find a creative way to make money from iPad accessories. And they might be just perfect for those educational settings that lack dedicated funding to do technology in the right way. These mounts are nice tools for the creative few who must have them. They will colonize a few classrooms, but I don’t see this accessory conquering the classroom universe at either the university or K-12 level. After speaking with many dozens of teachers about this, I am now sure. Most teachers don't want to use their limited stock of precious iPads in this dedicated way. It makes no sense to them.

Incidentally, whether you use a document camera or a mounted iPad for visual teaching and learning, the ideas, strategies, and techniques highlighted in my Digital Shapeshifter book will apply richly to both.

iPads as Doc Cams

The newest craze in document cameras at the FETC and TCEA conferences this year is the attempt to turn the iPad into a document camera. Some of the products I found on the exhibit floor included those featured throughout this page. As you can see, they come in every imaginable size, shape, and color.

One of the products, produced by Belkin, come with an app to give document camera software functionality to the concept. Max Cases also offered an interesting table-grip approach. 

What do you make of this trend? Will it last? For now, just take a look at this interesting phenomenon. I will comment on the relevance of this development in a future post after I interview lots and lots of teachers about the concept.

(Note: I have completed my extensive teacher interviews and have posted the results here.)