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At a recent Excellence in Teaching award luncheon at the University of California, Santa Cruz, a conversation turned to lecture capture and revealed unexpected impacts.

the students requested he add lecture capture recordings. He agreed. Audio recordings and a data feed were made available on demand so that students could access the lecture materials for review. Brummell's intent was to offer the lecture capture materials as supplements to the classroom experience.

Brummell pointed out that using the cameras has drawbacks. "This means you sit down at the camera," he said. "I don't like that. I prefer to be up and active. With lots of students in the class, you can't really pick out specific students very easily, and no one wants to ask questions." After a few lectures, Brummell noticed that a sizeable number of students had stopped coming to class, presumably because they preferred to listen to the recordings. With the class scheduled in a large auditorium, the students who came to class tended to sit closer to the front of the room and nearer to the professor. While the use of the document cameras forced him to remain anchored to a specific location in the classroom, Brummell noted that because the students were closer, he could look up and talk directly to them. "I started getting to know a few names and faces, especially the students who got there early like me," he said. "I chatted with some of them on a regular basis."

The international survey of 1,000 respondents shows a boost in the use of video in distant learning, with almost half wanting to experience video in at least 50% of their classrooms

The results reveal a boom in the use of video for remote teaching and learning with 66% of respondents stating that their institutions now use these capabilities, up from 28% in 2016

Interestingly, 39% of those surveyed state that students studying remotely at their institution are already using video-based solutions to join live classes and lectures, while a further 49% are keen to add these capabilities to their offerings. Remote video capabilities are also being used to let presenters who are not based at the institution to teach and lecture to students, with 54% of all respondents saying that they are already benefiting from this.

he Consortium for School Networking on Wednesday announced a new initiative in partnership with the online educator network edWeb.net designed to improve technology for rural school districts. The project, “Tech for Rural Districts,” will offer support for district leaders through a webinar series and a new online platform.

Topics will include broadband access, avenues to acquire technology funding, and community involvement. The webinars will be archived on the initiative’s online learning community, which launched today and is open to the public.

Botiful is the first consumer tele-presence robot. With Skype as a simple interface you or your friends can control the robot and be remotely present from anywhere in the world.

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Higher education institutions are increasingly using lecture capture to help their students, according to a 2018 State of Video in Education report from Kaltura. There was a 21% increase in lecture capture use by institutions over the last two years, up from 65% in 2016 to 79% this year. Lecture capture doesn’t just take place in standard lecture halls too, with 10% of all those responding saying they already capture over half of all classes, wherever they take place, and 31% keen to follow their lead. Overall, 88% of respondents across higher education and K-12 (primary/secondary schools) already use lecture capture tools or intend to in the future.

The use of video by students for assignments is on the rise, at 69% this year, up from 59% in 2017. Video feedback on student assignments is also growing and is now used by more than a third of institutions (35%) – up from 27% last year – perhaps due to the growth in remote learning.

Closed captions are in use at over half (52%) of institutions today, while 34% use interactive video quizzes to help students learn more effectively. Mobile apps that make it easy for students to watch videos on the move, or offline, are used by 39% of institutions, and a further 53% are eager to add this capability.

For the sixth year in a row, the topic of faculty development has turned up among the top three "teaching and learning issues" in an annual survey done by Educause. This year that same issue was also No. 1, getting 25 percent more votes than the next top choice: online and blended learning

faculty development refers to the work of helping instructors produce active learning activities that will engage students and help them achieve learning objectives; online and blended learning refers to the creation of courses that will serve students both on campus and remotely.

Panopto’s third generation capture tools record from virtually any video or audio device that can be plugged into a laptop and can capture and play multiple simultaneous video feeds, slides, images and screen recordings.

However, the choice of lecture capture software is affected by the selection of hardware, and this can be a problem. As Dean Offord, European sales engineer for Panasonic Business, points out: “At the moment compatibility between software and hardware is not as universal as vendors of either would like. Simple integration is incredibly important within AV. That is why Panasonic ProAV has recently developed the new Virtual USB driver to configure the Panasonic PTZ line-up with popular lecture capture systems over IP with a single Cat5e or Cat6 for high-definition capture

Collaborations between lecture capture hardware and software companies are a great way to offer a full systems package to educational institutions, giving peace of mind of a reliable and high quality system.