Blog Post Module 1 (EDUC 8848)

A current technology that has emerged in the last few years that helps to shape learning, comprehension, and productivity at UT Martin is the addition of the Echo360 classroom.
Echo360 is a lecture capture system that allows students to gain access to course content and review at their leisure from rich media or podcasts on Blackboard, the school's course management system. The EchoSystem has capability to capture video, audio, and classroom visuals including professor handwriting.

The problems and or challenges from the Echo360 classroom were that one classroom on a campus with 4,000+ students was not feasible to fit our needs. With the surge of online class offerings at the university, the greater the need for professors to utilize the technolgy to capture and publish their course content onto Blackboard. Instructors at the university had to reserve the room in advance and wait for their turn to use the room to record course content. This simply was not feasible and instructors were unable to meet deadlines for publishing coursework online. More Echo360 classrooms had to be set up to help accomodate the needs of the campus and currently there are at least one 360 classroom per building on campus.

The Echo360 classroom has extended the face-to-face classroom to the online learners which is a societal need. It is user-friendly and recordings start immediately when the instructor begins speaking. There is an editing feature that the instructor can use to correct mishaps or mistakes. The Echo360 digitalizes the content and students may watch on the computer or their favorite mobile equipment. The technology is student centered and that is what I like about it because I teach a lot of fundamental skills to nursing students.

To make this technology even better, I would suggest that every classroom on campus needs to be Echo360 ready. The university has recently purchased software called Echo360 Personal Capture to create Echo360 recordings from the professors personal computers. Unfortunately, half of the professors on campus have MAC operating system and Personal Capure will not function properly at this time.