I have noticed an
unseemly shadow slowly overtaking the document camera industry over the last
half-dozen ed-tech conferences, a trend that deeply bothers me: some companies,
most recently Aver Information and Lumens, seem to be disengaging from their
core mission of selling visualizers and promoting
visual teaching and learning. Instead, they are
refocusing and retooling their business in favor of display sharing software,
school video security systems, or even video conferencing.
Why are they doing
this? Evidently, the document camera market has been shrinking, as it
approaches 60% deployment in U.S. classrooms. They need to feed the revenue zombies
with additional profit centers it seems. They need to survive.
Why does this trend
deeply concern me? Well, I would rather see
these companies concentrate on
- teaching strategies using document cameras;
- better professional development for visualizer use;
- visual teaching and learning approaches.
Doing these things
well will create a welcome swell of new customers. Providing professional
development services will usher in a fresh new revenue stream for a rapidly
fossilizing hardware market. Concentrating on the instructional use, and not
the hardware specs, of visualizers will create a freshness in the education
market.
It’s always easy to
follow the hardware breadcrumbs for revenue. But forsaking the heart of the
matter—visual teaching and learning—is an immense mistake. That’s the core
mission for these companies. Unfortunately, some of these firms are diluting
their future potential by diversifying and moving away from their core.
