Company
October 10, 2008. Interact. Engage. Measure.
These themes will be evident in Tidebreak’s exhibit at the EDUCAUSE 2008 conference. Tidebreak will present some of its latest product initiatives and discuss applications of TeamSpot and ClassSpot. Learn how Tidebreak continues to advance the “state of the art” in technology-enabled learning spaces.
Among the new developments on display will be:
Tidebreak’s TeamSpot and ClassSpot products present an entirely different way for students and faculty to work collaboratively together. In an effort to continually improve the user experience, Tidebreak has developed two exciting new capabilities:
ReadyClient™ — Allow visitors or first-time users to connect to a TeamSpot or ClassSpot with a just single keystroke — and without installing software — using a pre-configured Tidebreak Client running on a USB drive. ReadyClient is the perfect solution for inviting visitors to join a session or for users who do not have Administrator rights to install software on their computer.
Course Management Integration — Configure ClassSpot to automatically upload a session Archive to the appropriate course page in your campus Course Management System. ClassSpot uses a flexibly plug-in architecture to allow institutions to configure the Host to post to your campus’s default standard system or else post them to another network location.
Tidebreak has been working with a number of customers who are deploying TeamSpot and ClassSpot widely across their campus enterprise. To facilitate these deployments, we have introduced new resources and made product improvements that keep support requirements low, both in terms of technology adoption and technical support.
Self-Directed Orientation — Campuses can download and distribute digital orientation materials that illustrate best practices for using TeamSpot and ClassSpot. These range from printable posters and handouts to online video tutorials, and include animated screensavers that illustrate how to make the most of the collaborative technology.
Enterprise Deployment Capabilities — Tidebreak makes it easy to deploy and maintain TeamSpot and ClassSpot installations across your campus by conforming to a variety of common deployment scenarios. Host configurations can now be stored in any location — including network drives — allowing Host computer images to be managed using products like DeepFreeze™. This same facility also allows all Hosts on campus to be upgraded by simply updating the master Host image. Both TeamSpot and ClassSpot now support per-machine master configurations for enhanced security, so users can login to the Host machine using their own credentials. Tidebreak Clients can be pre-configured to list all TeamSpot and ClassSpot locations on campus, so students can simply select a location from a menu to connect to it.
A fundamental question educators and IT professionals ask is whether particular technologies have an impact on student learning. Tidebreak is providing new tools that measure the impact of learning space designs on student engagement and present results as data visualizations. Using student and faculty interactions as a basis, it is now easy to measure — quantitatively — the effect that learning space technology can have on student engagement.
TideScope™ Analytics — This analytics package provides an automated way for system administrators to collect quantitative data regarding the use of learning space technology 24 hours a day. This data is then processed and displayed in a number of different graphical representations as part of a “dashboard” that allows institutions to analyze the effect on learning activities from several different perspectives. Individual data visualizations can be easily exported for use in presentations and reports.
Usage Reporting — This optional feature allows IT professionals to monitor usage rates for TeamSpot and ClassSpot installations, though it can be particularly valuable in analyzing the rate of adoption of collaborative technology in informal learning spaces. The reporting feature notes the number of students or faculty connecting to a Host system for a collaborative session, and depending on the configuration settings, can indicate the number of computers in use categorized by operating system and Tidebreak Client version number. Quantitative usage data is collected 24 hours a day; connection data also maps to hour of the day and Host name.
Come visit us in Orlando, and learn for yourself why so many institutions are deploying Tidebreak’s solutions on their campuses.
ClassSpot, ReadyClient, TeamSpot, Tidebreak, TideScope, and TideScope Analytics are trademarks of Tidebreak, Inc. DeepFreeze is a trademark of Faronics Corporation.