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.