1   Ensemble  Video    -­‐  CNYRIC  

Ensemble  Video  Empowers  a  K-­‐12  Consortium  in  Central  New  York      

Summary  

The  Central  New  York  Regional  Information  Center  (CNYRIC)  serves  50  school  districts  and  4  Boards  of  Cooperative  Educational  Services  (BOCES)  across  eight  counties  in  the  central  region  of  New  York  State.      

Amy  Spath,  Coordinator  of  E-­‐Learning  and  Special  Projects  for  CNYRIC,  is  responsible  for  assisting  the  school  districts  with  all  e-­‐learning  initiatives,  as  well  as  for  the  use  of  Ensemble  within  CNYRIC.  Between  CNYRIC  and  the  districts,  there  are  close  to  700  users  and  almost  15,000  educational  videos  available  in  the  Ensemble  Video  implementation.  

The  Challenge  

CNYRIC  first  began  searching  for  a  video  platform  because  teachers  needed  to  incorporate  videos  into  classroom  learning.  Free  solutions,  like  Vimeo  and  Youtube,  were  typically  blocked  within  the  schools  as  they  weren’t  safe  sites  for  students  to  access.  

Institution  Name  Central  New  York  Regional  Information  Center  (CNYRIC)  

Challenges  Needed  a  secure  means  for  students  to  access  educational  videos.    Needed  a  secure  means  for  teachers  to  upload  and  manage  educational  videos.  Needed  to  reach  the  maximum  number  of  schools  with  specialized  teachers  and  programs  through  video  learning  initiatives.  Needed  to  provide  professional  development  courses  and  technology  tutorials  online  for  teachers  for  anywhere,  anytime  learning.  

Benefits  Enhanced  student  learning  through  video-­‐based  instruction  and  flipped  classroom  experiences.  Students  have  been  able  to  participate  in  collaborative  learning  projects  with  other  schools.    Reached  teachers  with  video  tutorials,  enabling  them  to  enhance  their  instruction  with  e-­‐learning  opportunities.  

 

At  a  Glance  

CASE  STUDY

2   Ensemble  Video    -­‐  CNYRIC  

that  reaches  across  the  region  and  provides  high-­‐speed  connectivity  for  the  school  districts,  so  it  was  a  natural  choice  for  them  to  self-­‐host  Ensemble  Video.  This  has  been  ideal  for  CNYRIC,  which  updates  the  storage  available  as  media  libraries  continue  to  grow.  Ensemble  Video  is  an  ideal  solution  for  consortium  deployments,  which  in  this  case  allows  CNYRIC  to  provide  access  to  Ensemble  for  all  50  school  districts  in  an  efficient,  cost-­‐effective  manner.  

Ensemble  Video’s  mission  has  always  been  to  transform  teaching  and  education,  helping  teachers  and  school  districts  use  technology  to  enhance  learning.  Key  to  that  has  been  ensuring  that  technology  integration  was  responsive  to  teachers’  needs  and  easy  to  use,  minimizing  the  time  they  spend  in  prep  work.  Amy  Spath,  Coordinator  of  E-­‐learning,  commented  on  Ensemble’s  ease  of  use:  “It’s  very  easy…  it  has  the  wizard  for  teachers  to  step  through  to  add  their  information  and  their  videos.  The  teachers  especially  like  some  of  the  newer  features  that  are  available,  for  instance,  being  able  to  create  chapter  points  in  videos  to  make  them  shorter  and  to  make  places  for  students  to  stop  and  reflect.”  

CNYRIC  hosted  “Lunch  and  Learns”  to  not  only  provide  instruction  to  teachers  on  maximizing  the  potential  of  Ensemble  Video,  but  also  to  allow  them  to  answer  each  other’s  questions  and  provide  feedback  and  feature  requests.  Ensemble  Video  has  been  responsive  in  answering  these    

 

feature  requests  with  ongoing  developments.  “Very  open  to  suggestions  for  improvement,”  Amy  Spath  noted.  

Customer  support  was  an  important  issue  for  the  school  districts  because  of  the  timeliness  and  reliability  necessary  with  students  submitting  their  video  homework  through  the  dropbox  feature  and  teachers  incorporating  those  videos  into  classes.  When  there  were  technical  challenges  or  questions,  even  on  a  Sunday  night,  when  homework  was  due  Monday  or  a  planned  class  activity  hung  in  the  balance,  Ensemble  technical  support  was  quick  to  assist.  

Results  

Within  the  school  districts,  Ensemble  Video  is  used  to  enhance  student  learning.  For  instance,  American  Sign  Language  (ASL)  classes  are  recorded  when  a  teacher  will  be  absent  and  then  

Teachers  needed  a  way  to  share  and  store  media  that  would  be  safe  and  secure  for  students  to  use  either  within  the  school  or  at  home.  CNYRIC  initially  answered  two  districts’  requests  for  a  video  platform  with  Ensemble  as  a  pilot  program  to  meet  these  needs.    

The  Search  

Many  CNYRIC  school  districts  use  Blackboard  for  online  courses,  so  it  was  important  the  video  platform  solution  integrate  with  Blackboard.    They  needed  a  platform  that  would  also  integrate  with  CNYRIC’s  Cisco  Content  Server  videoconferencing  system  to  capture  meetings  and  instruction  for  future  playback.  The  solution  also  needed  to  work  with  a  variety  of  video  recording  software  tools,  since  there  wasn’t  one  single  application  being  used  across  all  the  classrooms;  different  departments  and  districts  were  using  Camtasia,  Screen  Recorder  and  Screencast-­‐o-­‐matic.      

Most  of  all,  it  needed  to  be  a  secure  method  of  storing  and  sharing  videos  that  students  could  safely  access  without  the  risk  of  encountering  inappropriate  content.  It  also  needed  to  be  quick  for  teachers  and  staff  members  to  use,  with  user-­‐friendly  uploading  and  publishing  of  videos.  The  search  led  CNYRIC  to  Ensemble  Video,  which  met  all  of  their  criteria.  

The  Solution  

CNYRIC  wanted  to  maintain  as  much  control  as  possible  over  the  e-­‐learning  initiatives.  They  already  had  a  fiber-­‐based  WAN  in  place  

Amy  Spath    eLearning  and  Educational  Media  Coordinator    Rob  Leo  Model  Schools  Coordinator  

3   Ensemble  Video    -­‐  CNYRIC  

"Many of them embrace it because they can listen to it on their iPhone, they can get their work done while on the bus to a sporting event. They like the fact that they can pause, rewind and listen again, which in the classroom they can’t.”

published  with  Ensemble  Video  in  Edmodo.    ASL  III  students  are  also  recording  videos  using  iPads  to  share  with  the  ASL  I  and  II  classes.  

High  school  math  and  science  teachers  are  flipping  their  classrooms,  having  students  create  video  presentations  in  order  to  teach  their  peers.  Ensemble  allows  teachers  to  create  a  dropbox  for  student  assignments,  making  video  homework  easy  to  collect,  check,  and  then  share  with  the  class.    

Mary  Ward  teaches  Honors  Chem/AP  Chem  at  Fayetteville-­‐Manlius  High  School.  She  decided  to  flip  her  Honors  Chemistry  class.  She  relates,  “This  means  having  them  listen  or  read  notes  at  night  and  then  the  next  day  come  in  and  do  reinforcement  exercises  to  help  them  further  understand  what  they  learned.”    

“For  my  Honors  Chemistry  class,  I  would  record  the  videos.  I  had  my  lectures  very  well-­‐developed  on  PowerPoint,  so  I  converted  all  my  lectures  from  PowerPoint  to  videos  using  Ensemble.  That  was  pretty  easy.  I  used  Camtasia  Studio  to  create  my  videos.  I  would  open  up  Camtasia,  run  the  Powerpoint  and  record  my  voice,  use  Camtasia  to  edit  as  I  saw  fit,  and  then  I  would  go  into  Ensemble  and  upload  the  video  from  Camtasia  Studio  to  Ensemble.  Then  I  could  put  the  video  into  Blackboard  last  year,  and  this  year  Schoology.”  

While  the  use  of  Ensemble  is  transparent  to  students,  they  really  enjoy  the  flipped  classroom  and  the  ability  to  access  the  videos  for  their  nightly  homework  anywhere,  anytime.  “Many  of  them  embrace  it  because  they  can  listen  to  it  on  their  iPhone,  they  can  get  their  work  done  while  on  the  bus  to  a  sporting  event.  They  like  the  fact  that  they  can  pause,  rewind  and  listen  again,  which  in  the  classroom  they  can’t.  They  can  watch  the  videos  again  before  a  unit  test,  at  sections  they  may  not  understand,  rather  than  having  to  come  in  after  school.  They  can  listen  to  it  on  their  own  time,”  Mary  Ward  explains.  

 

CNYRIC  

Ensemble  Video  Case  Study  

Mary  Ward  has  also  found  it  easy  to  transfer  related  videos  to  other  courses  with  Ensemble;  she’s  able  to  quick  publish  some  of  her  videos  from  Honors  Chemistry  to  share  with  her  AP  Chemistry  class,  minimizing  the  time  she  spends  on  technical  tasks.  

North  Syracuse  Central  School  District  has  found  an  effective  way  to  engage  the  community  on  school  board  matters  with  video,  using  Ensemble  together  with  videoconferencing  and  their  Cisco  Content  Server.  Board  meetings  are  streamed  live  online,  and  then  archived  for  future  playback  online,  enabling  greater  community  involvement  even  for  those  who  cannot  attend  in  person.  

4   Ensemble  Video    -­‐  CNYRIC  

CNYRIC  also  uses  Ensemble  video  across  a  range  of  departments,  such  as  the  Staff  Development  Group,  the  Instructional  Tech  and  Design  Group,  Data  and  Student  Services,  and  Special  Education.      Rob  Leo,  Model  Schools  Coordinator  for  CNYRIC,  is  responsible  for  all  professional  development  activities  within  the  Instructional  Tech  and  Design  department,  including  creating  tutorials  and  Blackboard  courses  to  help  teachers  more  effectively  and  efficiently  use  technology  in  their  classroom.    

ITD  offers  classes  on  Google  Tools,  Blackboard,  social  networking  for  teachers,  and  incorporating  iPads  into  the  classroom,  among  others.    To  create  classes  on  iPad  use  in  the  classroom,  he  uses  the  Explain  Everything  app  on  the  iPad  to  capture  screenshots  and  add  narration,  and  then  uploads  the  videos  with  Ensemble.  For  other  courses,  he  uses  Screencast-­‐O-­‐Matic  to  create  custom  videos  of  his  screen  with  mouse  movements  and  narration.  He  uses  Ensemble’s  Blackboard  Building  Blocks  to  host  the  videos  within  the  course.    He  states  Ensemble  Video  has  been  a  “key  component  of  teaching  teachers  how  the  tools  work”.  Other  features  that  have  been  helpful  are  the  ability  to  group  videos  and  share  via  web  link,  allowing  him  to  provide  access  to  a  group  of  related  instruction  to  teachers  who  aren’t  using  Blackboard,  and  the  ease  of  making  changes  to  embedded  videos  without  having  to  change  the  URL.  

Phone  

(315)  753-­‐0094  

Company  

Ensemble  Video  PO  Box  6505  Syracuse,  NY  13217  

Phone  

(315)  753-­‐0094  

Web  

www.ensemblevideo.com  

Future  

“We  continue  to  promote  Ensemble  Video  to  our  districts.  More  and  more  teachers  are  having  their  kids  make  short  videos,”  Amy  Spath  explains,  especially  now  that  students  can  upload  videos  from  the  iPads  directly  to  Ensemble.  Quite  a  few  of  the  classes  have  iPad  libraries  and  more  iPads  are  on  the  way;    teachers  are  taking  advantage  of  the  teaching  opportunities  this  technology  provides  and  finding  Ensemble  is  key  to  effectively  utilizing  videos  in  their  classrooms.    The  “flipped  classroom”  concept,  engaging  students  in  teaching  their  peers,  continues  to  grow.    

Ensemble  Video  has  been  instrumental  in  teachers  incorporating  technology  meaningfully  into  their  classrooms,  and  as  those  uses  for  technology  continue  to  develop,  Ensemble  will  continue  to  update  and  grow  to  meet  the  demands  of  educators.  

CNYRIC  Staff  Development  Portal    

Ensemble  Video  Case  Study  

Company  

Ensemble  Video  PO  Box  6505  Syracuse,  NY  13217  

Phone  

(315)  753-­‐0094  

Web  

www.ensemblevideo.com