New Web Classroom

We are excited about the release of our new Web Classroom. Thanks to feedback from our users, we have improved a bunch of features and added some new ones:
* One-click switch between views for Video, Document and Whiteboard
* Increased size of the teacher video
* Increased space for document presentation
* Increased size of student panel in video view
* Students have now an additional, large Request Live Turn button
* Volume input regulator for teacher to adjust audio for students
* Audio level indicator for teacher to verify that the microphone is working

Here a screenshot of the Video view (teacher view).

Video view (teacher)

Here a screenshot of the Document Sharing view.

Document sharing view

Do you like it? Check it out for yourself by creating & scheduling a web class.

Here is the tutorial of our new web classroom.

We hope you like our re-design, and that it will improve the quality of your web classes and webinars. Please keep sending your feedback. We are sure that this will not be our last version.

Enrich your teaching with content from other Academies

We just launched a new feature that boosts your teaching capacity: You can now post content from other Academies in your Library, and use it for your Courses and Web Classes.

It’s really easy! Just find a content, video or document, you’d like to use for your teaching. On the content page, right next to the title, click on Add to My Library. That content is then posted immediately to your Library. Now, you can add that content to your courses and web classes (at the moment, you can only show docs in your webclasses). Sclipo indicates how many Libraries, Courses and Web Classes use a content. Academies automatically improve their reputation, if their content is used by other Academies. The Academy owning the content retains the rights over it. Academies who do not want others to use their content – because they may charge for it or because it is confidential – can restrict it from being shared.

Here is the tutorial for this feature.

We created this feature because sharing fosters education. Every physical library houses content from multiple authors and any educator uses content from others for teaching. On Sclipo, this sharing is much easier and more efficient than for physical libraries. A content is placed in another Library with just one mouse click. In addition, the amount of times a content is shared on Sclipo is one of the best references for its quality. This feature will thus help our users find the good stuff easier.

We hope you like this new feature.

Sclipo – ahora en español

Pues no estaba planeado para Julio 2009. Pero hubo mucha demanda por parte de nuestros miembros y ganas de nuestro equipo – sobre todo de Victor – para tener Sclipo en español. Gracias a Victor tenemos ahora un nuevo sistema de traducción y multi-idioma rápido y flexible. Hemos traducido las mil y pico líneas de texto y hemos lanzado Sclipo en español el 1 de Julio de 2009.

Con esto – creo – somos la primera red social educativa del mundo en español.

¡Gracias Victor!

También hemos creado más tutoriales en español, como este:

Sclipo launches Courses, Live Web Classes and Library

We are happy to announce exciting new features that take us a giant step closer towards fulfilling Sclipo’s vision: to make online learning easier, better and social.

What started as a place to share educational videos, is now a web application for the millions of teachers and companies that find traditional eLearning solutions too complex and too costly. As a web application, any teacher or organization can use Sclipo to create courses and web classes, and to invite their students, all in a matter of minutes. Traditional eLearning solutions on the other hand require a web server installation, configuration and continuous maintenance, and much more. This complexity and cost makes traditional eLearning unattainable for anyone without extensive technological know-how or a big budget.

As well as democratizing access to eLearning, Sclipo also transforms the eLearning experience through REA (Rich Educational Applications) and social features that take the quality of learning and interaction to a new level. Most importantly, Sclipo introduces the essential ingredient that’s been missing from eLearning – informal or social learning: Sclipo allows any member to teach and learn. In traditional eLearning, “users” must choose either tools for teachers or for students. At Sclipo, they get both. Sclipo makes learning online social – just like it is in real life. Peers or “non-certified” teachers are after all the backbone of education in families, schools and companies.

Here’s a summary of the most important new features:
1. Academy: Every member has an Academy – in addition to a Profile. The Academy is the space where a member teaches through educational apps like Courses, Library or Live Web Classes.
2. Courses: This app allows members to create and post courses they teach online through Sclipo, face-to-face or blended.
3. Library: The Library serves to store, manage and share educational content in any format – videos, documents, presentations, spreadsheets, etc.
4. Live Web Classes: Here, Academies can teach up to 100 students live through webcam, whiteboard and a document presenter. Students can participate actively through audio, video and chat. Teachers can present any document from their library. No downloads needed.
5. Payments: Teachers can charge students for their courses and web classes. Students pay teachers directly through PayPal.

And here’s an overview of all features. Most features are free, some are for Premium Members, like Payments and the private Web Classroom (a public Web Classroom is free to use). Premium Members pay a flat fee.

Ready to experience Sclipo? Check out this demo Academy.

We also recommend you enroll in the free and open course Sclipo Basics. There, the Sclipo team shows you how to teach, learn and socialize with Sclipo.

What’s next? There’s a lot more ahead for Sclipo and plenty of improvements and new features we are working on. We’d love to hear your ideas and feedback. Just send us an email.

We hope you like the new Sclipo. Very special thanks to Albert, Chris, Edwin, Jorge, Marcio, Nacho, Victor for their incredible efforts to revolutionize learning!

Sclipo Connects with Facebook

Today we launched Sclipo with Facebook Connect. We believe Connect will add a lot of value to our members. The two most important (and immediate) benefits for us are:
1. One-click login: Current and new users can now log in with their Facebook identity and allow Sclipo to access their Facebook profile information.
2. New forms of distribution: Our users can now share content and actions taken on Sclipo with friends back on Facebook through Feed, invites, and other social communication channels on Facebook.

Check out the Facebook Developer Wiki for more info on the benefits of Connect and how to implement it.

Thanks much to Victor for connecting Facebook & Sclipo (which is not as easy as it seems).

Sclipo launches Educational Docs through Scribd Integration

Good teachers not only educate “audio-visually”. They also use documents to reinforce and complement their content. And while for most (65% of) students, the preferred learning style is visual, they still need to support their learning through documents. This is why we have launched Sclipo Educational Docs.

With this, Sclipo is the first to complement user generated educational videos with documents.

How it works: Like with educational videos, members of Sclipo can upload any document (in any format), as long as it is educational: lectures, classroom presentations, white-papers, research results, and so on. The documents are then displayed through a Flash player, and users can vote, comment, print or save it.

Advantages: Unlike traditional eLearning systems, learners can read the document within the browser without the need to download or print it. (A small contribution to the environment!). Another advantage is that teachers and learners know how many people have seen a document, and how it was valued and commented. (We will add more analytics soon.) This is not possible in many existing systems, where the only way to read a doc is to download it as a PDF, without analytics beyond the number of downloads.

We have chosen iPaper, the world’s most popular document player from Scribd. It supports all popular formats:
> Adobe PDF & PostScript (.pdf, .ps)
> Microsoft Office (.doc, .docx, .ppt, .pps, .pptx, .xls, .xlsx)
> OpenOffice Documents (.odt, .sxw, .odp, .sxi, .ods, .sxc)
> OpenDocument (all formats)
> StarOffice Documents
> Plain & Rich text (.txt, .rtf)
Members can upload an unlimited number of documents with a maximum file size of 20 MB each.

We hope you enjoy Sclipo Educational Documents, and that it helps to teach and learn with more efficiency and quality!

Sclipo lanza Documentos Educativos

Un buen profe no solo educa “audio-visualmente”, sino también reparte documentos para reforzar y complementar su enseñanza. Y, a los estudiantes no solo les gusta ver y escuchar a los profes, también quieren repasar contenidos escritos. Por esto en Sclipo hemos lanzado Documentos Educativos.

Con esto, Sclipo se convierte en la primera web en España que ofrece compartir documentos tipo Slideshare. También somos los primeros – a nivel mundial (a nuestro saber) – que complementan videos educativos creados por usuarios con documentos.

Así funciona: Igual que Videos Educativos, los miembros de Sclipo pueden subir cualquier documento (en cualquier formato), siempre y cuando sea de contenido educativo: presentaciones de clases, manuales, resultados de investigación, etc. Los documentos se visualizan través de un player Flash, y se pueden votar, comentar, imprimir o guardar. La visualización es según el formato original, con opción de pantalla completa. Es decir, si subes una presentación podrás pasar páginas igual que en PowerPoint.

Ventajas: A diferencia de sistemas tradicionales de eLearning y muchos Campus Online, se puede leer el documento en pantalla completa sin necesidad de bajarlo y/o imprimirlo. (¡Una pequeña contribución al medio ambiente!) Otra ventaja es que profes y estudiantes saben cuánta gente ha visto un documento, qué comentan sobre el mismo y cómo lo valoran. (Pronto añadiremos más analítica.) Esto no es posible en muchos sistemas actuales, donde la única forma de acceder a un documento es bajárselo como pdf, sin ninguna analítica más profunda que el número de downloads.

Hemos elegido iPaper de Scribd, el player de documentos más popular del mundo. Aceptamos todos los formatos populares:
> Adobe PDF & PostScript (.pdf, .ps)
> Microsoft Office (.doc, .docx, .ppt, .pps, .pptx, .xls, .xlsx)
> OpenOffice Documents (.odt, .sxw, .odp, .sxi, .ods, .sxc)
> OpenDocument (todos los formatos)
> StarOffice Documents
> Plain & Rich text (.txt, .rtf)
Miembros pueden subir un número ilimitado de documentos. Hay un limite de 20 MB por documento.

¡Esperamos que os guste Sclipo Documentos, y que ayude a aprender y a enseñar con más eficiencia y calidad!

New Year’s Features

We had a fantastic year (it was our first one :)! And we are sure joining Sclipo was your most memorable social network event (just kidding). Well … not really. Facebook is for keeping up with friends, YouTube is for having fun, and Sclipo is for sharing knowledge and meeting people to teach and learn from through video … or, Sclipo is for social learning.

And yes! It is New Years … so below are some New Features for you. We hope these help you improve your learning experience. If not, please tell us what features you’d like. We will work our butts off to fulfill your wishes during 2008.

All the best for 2008 from your Sclipo Team!!

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Here our New Features for you:

Google thumb: When searching videos via Google, thumbnails of your videos at Sclipo will show on the Google search result page, which means more people will find your videos at Sclipo through Google.

Enhanced player: To ease learning from a video, we added a slow motion and step-by-step functionality to our player.

RSS: Keen on a specific area? Or, do you like a specific member Academy? Just subscribe!

Invite Students, Friends, …: Do you want to teach your students through Sclipo? Now you can automatically invite students, colleagues and friends by importing their email addresses from your Gmail / Hotmail / Yahoo email address book.

Sclipo launches Webcam Record

Creating and uploading tutorials to Sclipo has just become much easier with Webcam Record. This new feature allows you to create and upload videos instantly with the webcam of your computer.

With Webcam Record, we are adding a second tool (the first was SclipoLive) that allows our members to create content in addition to publishing it.

Here is how Webcam Record makes sharing your skills so much easier:
1. No digital camera needed! You do not need an (expensive) digital video camera to film your skills. Any computer webcam will do (by the way, a decent webcam costs only around $20-30, a really top webcam costs around $100).
2. No lengthy file transfer needed! You do not need to transfer the video file from your camera to your computer.
3. No export or compression needed! You do not need to compress or export your video file with a video editing software. Webcam Record does all that work for you.

Yes, a webcam is probably no good to film your mountain bike tutorials, but there are many skills you can nicely capture, like for example cooking, language or any music / singing lessons. Our Webcam Record allows you to pause the recording, so you can easily create different chapters.

Here a video tutorial showing how Webcam Record works.

To use Webcam Record, just go to Upload. After describing your video, select Webcam Record to create and upload it.

For a review of Webcam Record, check out Kristen Nicole´s post on Mashable: Sclipo’s “Webcam Record” for Easy Video Addition.

Oh, have I mentioned that Sclipo is the first social learning network to offer such a feature? We hope you like it!

Questions or feedback? Just email edwin-at-sclipo.com.

Sclipo launches SclipoLive – a pioneer webcam teaching system

How was your summer? We had a great one … crunching out the public version of SclipoLive, our new webcam system for teaching. With SclipoLive, our Academies can now choose if they want to share knowledge via video, or webcam or both.

SclipoLive is a powerful new app that offers our members two distinct advantages:
1. To teach personalized classes live (how-to videos are, in the end, not customizable one-fits-all micro-lessons).
2. To make good money (teachers may charge for a live class, whereas users would hardly pay to watch a video, except for tips here and there). Teachers can use their videos as self-advertising! What better way to convince somebody that you are great teacher then showing her how good you teach in a short video?

Sclipo takes a small commission from the seller of a class. For classes taught for free, Sclipo charges nothing.

Here’s how SclipoLive works. Besides a large webcam window where you see the teacher / learner and a small window to see yourself, SclipoLive allows to chat and to take private notes. These are deep-tagged into the video stream, which is recorded. This means, classes (which remain private) can be reviewed, and by clicking on a note or chat text, you jump forward to the point where the chat / note was made.

Pretty cool, isn’t it? Don’t you wish you could have video-recorded all your classes, and that all your notes where deep-tagged, so you can easily find exactly that part of the lecture where the prof explained …

Here was what others say about SclipoLive: Genbeta, Mashable, Techcrunch.

We hope you like SclipoLive. Questions? Or interested in a demo? Please email Edwin [edwin-at-sclipo.com].

Sclipo launches Academies

We have just enhanced our tab “Masters” to become “Academies“. This improvement will have a strong impact on how people use and experience Sclipo.

Academies benefit our users, because, hey, its more meaningful and exciting to have YOUR Academy than just being a Master. Our members can now build their own “teaching institution” and even create their own “brand”.

All people and institutions can set up their Academy at Sclipo. From here they can share their knowledge by uploading their videos and by teaching live with SclipoLive – our pioneer webcam system (SclipoLive is currently in private Beta). Each Academy has its unique profile page and URL, where students will find all videos published by the Academy, communicate with its teacher(s) and meet its students.

Here some of our favorite Academies.
> Learn all about PCs, Windows and more from Virtualtweak.
> Boost your English language skills with ColorfulEnglish.
> Immerse yourself in Tai Chi with Weihong.
> Delight your friends with Spanish homemade cooking from Carme.

Sclipo announces SclipoLive in Blogak / StartUp 2.0 at Guggenheim in Bilbao

We are proud to announce, SclipoLive which we will be officially launched in its BIO (By Invitation Only) version on Monday, May 28, 2007. With this, Sclipo is the world’s first, user-generated skills-network offering a web-cam for live teaching.

SclipoLive will make a significant impact on non-academic learning: With SclipoLive, a Master can instruct one or many students anytime and anywhere in the world. Masters can charge students for the class, if they want, at the price they want. All classes are recorded.

Now, Hans from Hamburg can learn Flamenco-guitar from Pepe in Sevilla and Weihong can practice English with Jennifer from Seattle. SclipoLive also allows Students and Masters to chat during the class, to take notes and to exchange supporting documents. These are time-stamped and deep-tagged into the recorded class. Students can now review their classes much more efficiently then before: they just go to their notes and comments they made during any live class. Reviewing classes will easier and more productive than ever before.

For now, SclipoLive will only be accessible for selected users by invitation. If you want to be a beta-user, create an account on Sclipo and send us an email with your username to SclipoLiveBeta@Sclipo.com. If you want to be notified when SclipoLive goes live, please send an email to SclipoLiveNotification@Sclipo.com.

Thanks!

Sclipo launches new Master’s page

Today we launched a new Master’s page. We re-designed the layout so Masters can better communicate and promote their skills. We added a blackboard, where anybody can post a public message for a Master, like asking her/him to create a special skills-video. The new Master’s page also allows users to network around the skills of the Master: you can see and click through to all Students (= subscribers) of the Master and you can see who the Master is learning from in the myFavorite Masters box.

Also: each Master has now a unique, easy URL. So, Master Amanda’s URL is sclipo/user/amanda. So, open your Sclipo account fast to make sure to get your name on Sclipo.

We hope you like our new Master’s page.