Manage your invitations to courses, live sessions, groups and events from your profile

Posted on January 30, 2010

You can now manage your invitations to courses, live teaching sessions, groups and events directly from your profile.

After you have been invited, for example to enroll in a course offered by any Academy, you will be able to:
* Click on the title of the activity or view, to be directed to the info page of the corresponding activity. There you will find more info about it and you can decide if to accept the invitation.
* Click on the Name of the Academy that invited you. You will be directed to the Home of the Academy, to find out more about the Academy.
* Click Ignore, and the invite will disappear from your profile.

Only the owner of the profile can see the invitations. Not her contacts!

We hope you find this helpful. Thanks for your feedback!

Sclipo launches Groups

Posted on December 8, 2009

Groups are key in education to boost knowledge transfer and networking. Today, there is hardly any learning without group work. Groups are used for activities such as study, research or exam preparation. This is why Sclipo built an application to help our members organize online Groups.

While creating groups our goal was to respond to the specific needs of teachers and students - needs which are not solved by generic group apps:
* Integration with courses: groups are often part of a course, which needs to be associated with a group
* Sharing of educational content: presentations, audio, video, images need to be easily accessible and shareable for members
* Live meetings: allow group members to meet live via video chat, white board, doc sharing and other live collaboration tools

We also believe that the networking potential is better on Sclipo than on generic apps - as all our members, activities and content are about education.

Here is how we responded to these needs. With Sclipo Groups you can:
* Organize online groups for activities like study, research, test-prep
* Assign courses related to the group. For example, if your group members are part of the same course, you can associate that course to the group
* Share educational content related to the group: documents, presentations, videos, audio files and images
* Conduct live meetings with the group members, and store and share the recordings
* Discuss with members on the group wall
* Invite and administer members
* Restrict group membership to selected people or make it open for everyone

Here our Group Teaching on Sclipo. Why don’t you join?

To learn more about Sclipo Groups, check out these tutorials.

We hope you find Sclipo Groups useful and are looking forward to your feedback.

Sclipo launches Automatic System Check for Live Teaching

Posted on October 17, 2009

We created an automatic Live Teaching System Check. With one click, you can now check if:
* your webcam works
* your audio / microphone works
* your Internet speed (in special the upload speed) is sufficient

The Live Teaching System Check page also contains answers to common problems related to webcam and microphone installation.

We recommend that every participant of a Live Teaching session conducts this system check prior to its start! If you are the teacher / organizer of the session, make sure that all participants also conduct this system check.

Sclipo works with any broadband connection (DSL, ADSL, cable), webcam and microphone. Yet, the more broadband, the better (plus 1MB upload speed recommended). And, the better your webcam and microphone, the better the quality of your video and audio. We recommend you use one of these Sclipo recommended webcams.

Many problems related to our Live Teaching system are caused by the incorrect setting-up of webcams and microphones, and too low or unstable Internet speeds (in special the upload speed). Remember that by participating in or giving a live class, you are “uploading” a lot of data: video, sound, chat text, whiteboard drawing, etc.. If your Internet speed is too slow, our servers will receive your data with delay, which will cause other participants to also see and hear you with delay.

So, check your system now! It takes just a few seconds: http://sclipo.com/liveteaching/systemcheck

We hope this Live Teaching System Check is helpful!

Happy live teaching and learning!

Sclipo launches Educational Events

Posted on October 7, 2009

Events play a mayor role in education as they foster knowledge transfer and networking. Events such as seminars, conferences and workshops are hence important complements to courses and individual learning activities. This is why Sclipo built an application to help our members organize face-2-face educational events.

Now, there are a lot of event apps out there. And we did not just want to give you yet-another-event-app. Our goal was to respond to the specific needs of educators - needs which in our view are not solved by generic event apps:
* Integration with courses: events are often part of an educational program consisting of various courses, which need to be associated with an event
* Sharing of educational content: presentations, audio, video, images - generated before and during an event - need to be easily accessible and shareable for participants before, during and especially after the event
* Remote participation: as travel and time budgets get tighter, the possibility to take part remotely is a strongly growing demand

Here is how we responded to these needs. With Sclipo Events you can:
* Organize off-line educational events such as conferences, workshops, seminars, lectures, etc.
* Assign courses related to the event. For example, if you want to organize a workshop as part of a course, you can easily assign that course to the workshop event.
* Share educational content related to the event: documents, presentations, videos, audio files and images
* Live stream the event, and store and share the recordings
* Discuss the event on its wall
* Invite and administer participants
* Charge participants for attendance
* Restrict events to a selected audience or make it open for everyone

We also believe that the networking potential will be outstanding - as all members, activities and content on Sclipo are about education.

Here an example Event:

Sclipo Events was built by Alex Blessing, with the invaluable support of Victor Bautista and Chris Grant. Edwin Toone did a great job in unearthing those nasty bugs that somehow always manage to sneak in. Thanks guys!

We hope you find Sclipo Events useful and are looking forward to your feedback.

Sclipo enables live teaching from Moodle

Posted on September 16, 2009

We released the long awaited Moodle plugin for our live web classroom. It allows Moodle users to teach live - classes, webinars and conferences - directly from Moodle. For free! We are looking forward to much live education from Moodle teachers, and we are happy that Sclipo can make contribution to Moodle.

With the Moodle plugin, you can:
* Schedule unlimited live classes and webinars from Moodle for up to 99 students
* Interact with students through webcam, whiteboard and chat
* Present and share documents during the live class and webinar
* Record live classes, and share and embed these in Moodle and other webs

Installation of the plugin is very easy:
1. Download the plugin
2. Copy the plugin to the folder “mod” in the directory: moodle/mod/
3. Log in to Moodle as Administrator and click on “Notifications”

Find more info and download the plugin from Sclipo and from Moodle, where you can also help improve the plugin.

Special thanks to Alexander Blessing for developing version 1 of the plugin!

Sclipo launches Partnership Program

Posted on September 8, 2009

We started a Partner Program to engage our members to help us spread the word about Sclipo. Sclipo makes learning and teaching online possible for everyone! This is what we want our Partners to emphasize when they promote Sclipo to people who teach, but don’t have the resources for a traditional LMS/CMS.

LMS (Learning Management System) and CMS (Course Management Systems) are complex and costly. Even if open source, you have to invest in configuration, hosting and maintenance. If you are not a web-development savvy teacher (99% of teachers aren’t), you will have to engage a LMS/CMS system consultant. Altogether, you are looking at at least a couple of months and plus 5000 USD to get started.

Most teachers can’t afford this. In special independent teachers, informal teachers (a friend, a colleague, you…) and small schools and companies for continuous education. With Sclipo however, they can get started in a matter of minutes. In addition to asynchronous instructional tools, Sclipo also provides powerful synchronous learning and social features that no LMS/CMS can offer. For example, at Sclipo you can share and connect with thousands of other people who are publishing and teaching courses and live web classes on Sclipo.

Our Partners get cool rewards! They earn a referral fee of up to 15% of the Premium Membership payments and free Premium accounts. Rewards are based upon the teaching activity of their referrals: the more a referral teaches, the higher the reward.

To help our Partners spread the word we are giving them these tools:
* A Partner page, which they can share through Twitter, Facebook, email, etc. The Partner page is a Sclipo Join page, personalized to each Partner. For example, people joining through for example the Partner page of member Jane are automatically referrals of Jane.
* A cool Partner Badge (see above), which Partners can embed in their web page or blog. It links directly to their personalized Join page.
* A Partner dashboard, which shows them all their referrals and teaching activities.

Check it out, and become a Partner today!

Sclipo launches Folders

Posted on August 28, 2009

I was giving a class to about Sclipo to teachers. One asked - “What about folders? I have lots of materials, and being able to organize it into folders would help my students a lot.”

We got to work, and a few days ago we launched Folders to help you organize the content of your Library. You can:
* create as many folders as you like
* describe and write tags for your folders, to help others understand its content
* assign a content item - like a video or document - to one or more folders
* share a URL to your folders (each folder has its own URL), so that students can go directly to the content you want to them to study
* delete folders (this does not delete its content)

Creating folders is very easy! In your Academy Library:
1. Click on Create New Folder
2. Write a Title, Description and Tags and click Create Folder
Done!

Assigning content to folders and removing it is even easier! In your Academy Library, after you have created at least 1 folder:
1. Find the content you want to assign to or remove from a folder, and click on Assign to / Remove from Folder
2. In the pop-up, you will see a list of all folders you have created. Simply check / uncheck the folders to which you want to assign / remove the content.
3. Click Save Changes
Done!

Here a short video tutorial.


To see an example of how folders work, check out the Sclipo University Library. There we have organized our tutorials into folders that are named according to the feature group they teach.

We are looking forward to you feedback!

New Web Classroom

Posted on August 14, 2009

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

Posted on August 2, 2009

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

Posted on July 9, 2009

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 organizes Facebook Connect Garage

Posted on April 12, 2009

We are proud to announce our third Facebook Garage, which will take place in Barcelona on April 16, 2009.

This Garage offers three newbies:

1) Connect: This Garage focuses on Facebook Connect. We will explore topics related to the Connect User Experience and Development / Integration.
2) Sclipo Courses: In addition to Facebook’s Event app, we are using Sclipo’s Courses app to organize the event and to make it more learningful. Courses serves us to post and share educational docs and videos related to Connect. In addition, it allows attendants to stay connect after the event.
3) Live streaming: This will be - to our knowledge - the first garage that is streamed live over the web for those who cannot attend in person. As of today over 60 people, mainly from Latin America, have signed up. We will be using Sclipo’s web classroom for the streaming.

Want to take part?
* To attend in person, sign up here.
* To participate via live streaming, sign up here.

Thanks a bunch to Julia Lam from Facebook for her support. And, a very special thanks to Intel, who is sponsoring this Garage.

Sclipo launches Courses, Live Web Classes and Library

Posted on March 20, 2009

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

Posted on February 20, 2009

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 Awarded Red Herring Top 100 Global Company

Posted on January 19, 2009

We are excited to announce that we have been awarded as one of the Red Herring Top 100 Global Companies of 2008. I’d like to thank the team for all its outstanding efforts to make Sclipo possible. Here an excerpt of the official press release from the Red Herring.

…Red Herring Top 100 Global Companies are chosen from winners and finalists of the previous North America, Europe and Asia Red Herring Top 100 Companies. Out of 1,800 successful and highly eligible companies, the Red Herring editorial team deployed a detailed process to drill-down the best companies first to 200 finalists, then to the top 100 winners of this global award. Evaluations were made on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, innovation, management, global strategy, and ecosystem integration. The announcement of the winners was made at the Red Herring 100 Global taking place in San Diego from January 14-16, 2009. Present among the finalists were elite executives and venture capital leaders from around the world. “We were so pleased to announce Sclipo as a Red Herring Top 100 Global Company,” commented Red Herring publisher Alex Vieux. “Sclipo has proven to be a company excelling in their industry and its ripples have turned into waves. We look forward to the changes it will make to its industry in the future.” …

Sclipo launches Educational Docs through Scribd Integration

Posted on November 29, 2008

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!