SP Controls is readying the second generation of its popular Doceri iPad-based whiteboard and presentation software for release this spring and will unveil a sneak preview at this week’s South By Southwest (SXSW) LAUNCHedu event.
The new Doceri software will include sophisticated screencasting with easy editing and audio voice over, enabling educators to publish their instruction materials to the Web in addition to creating and presenting hand drawn lessons live in the classroom.
Availability of the Doceri update is expected within the next 30 days. The Doceri Remote iPad app will remain free in the iTunes store,and will no longer require an active WIFI connection to Doceri Desktop. The update will also be free to registered users of both the paid and free trial versions of Doceri Desktop, which provides access to all pedagogical resources on the desktop or in the cloud, as well as expanded storage for Doceri live drawings and videos.
Doceri is one of just six technology solutions for higher education chosen to participate in the March 7, 2012 SXSW LAUNCHedu event. Participating companies will present their solutions to a jury consisting of panelists from education, entrepreneurship and venture capital. The panel will choose three finalists, one of which will be named the winner of the SXSW LAUNCHedu event.
Since its original release last year, Doceri has been adopted by teachers at all levels from K-12 to higher education, who recognize the iPad as the answer to interacting more with their students and less with their lesson presentation materials. Doceri offers teachers a natural interface to create, edit, save and replay hand-drawn lessons and presentations right on the iPad using their finger, a standard stylus or the accompanying Doceri GoodPoint intelligent stylus. In addition, Doceri provides remote access and wireless control over presentations or any software running on the instructor’s Mac or Windows PC, allowing annotation over presentations, JPEGs, PDFs and even live Web pages.
“Doceri allows me to present a lesson from anywhere in the classroom; a big plus when trying to manage 32+ middle school students,” says Anne Whitman, 7th grade math teacher at Oakdale Jr. High in California. “To actually see what I am writing and replay it while facing my students with my back to the board is amazing! I can work out equations ahead of time or live in front of the students.”
The popularity of the Kahn Academy educational video library has moved the concept of the flipped classroom to the forefront of educational technology discussion over the past year. The resulting paradigm shift moves direct learning from the classroom to the student’s computer – outside of class – via videos that cover the basic lesson material. This flipped classroom model frees the instructor to use class time for project-based learning and meaningful interaction about the material.
While instructors in higher education as well as at the K-12 level are using standard videos made available by Kahn and others, there is an increasing desire among instructors to create their own video screencasts – also called vodcasts – for use by their students and shared by other faculty.
The new version of Doceri will allow recording of audio and video simultaneously like basic apps on the market. However, this “one shot” approach can be challenging when the goal is to provide a quality video-based lesson. Doceri’s sophisticated authoring and editing tools also allow for multiple authors and unlimited editing before a final audio overlay is recorded.
This opens a wealth of options to instructors for including creating and sharing or monetizing lesson videos on YouTube, on private Web sites, on Learning Mangement System such as Moodle or Blackboard, or in iBooks.