ShareStream’s Rich Media Building Block for Asynchronous Teaching and Learning Completed in Collaboration with Georgetown University’s Interoperability Lab for Scholarly Systems

July 12, 2010 03:11 PM Eastern Daylight Time

WASHINGTON--ShareStream, the leading provider of rich media platforms for higher education and distance learning, announced today the release of its Rich Media Building Block for Blackboard Learn,™ Release 9.1. ShareStream’s new Blackboard Building Block™ is already live across the country at multiple institutions that will migrate to Release 9.1 for the Fall semester. This announcement follows ShareStream’s longstanding interoperability with previous releases of the Blackboard Learn platform.

With the advent of online video, audio, and podcasts, rich media has rapidly become an integral component of teaching and learning. The ShareStream Rich Media Platform, which was developed in collaboration with Georgetown University at its Sun Center of Excellence, provides a turnkey system for creating, editing, storing, managing and securely delivering rich media assets, designed specifically to fulfill rising demand from faculty, students and administrators for integrating rich media into online course delivery. ShareStream’s Rich Media Building Block for Release 9.1 allows educational institutions to extend the Blackboard Learn platform with a state-of-the-art rich media solution for the full lifecycle of media available seamlessly within the familiar context of the Blackboard Learn environment.

"For the past 4 1/2 years ShareStream has been a very useful tool to easily deliver audio and video content securely at Georgetown," stated Charles Leonhardt, Georgetown University's Principal Technologist. "ShareStream's tight integration with Georgetown's learning management system, Blackboard Learn, and our authentication, authorization, and library systems is laudable. The capability of ShareStream to encode, store, metadata tag, deliver, archive, and secure many thousands of objects has become a critical part of our information infrastructure. The system's flexibility to stream, podcast, and download content when appropriate provides an unmatched level of convenience for students. We can't imagine our scholarly systems landscape without it!"

ShareStream’s Blackboard Building Block provides single sign-on complete with role mapping between Blackboard Learn and the ShareStream Rich Media Platform. In addition, ShareStream’s interoperability with Release 9.1 provides multiple options for publishing media directly within the Blackboard Learn environment, including deep embedding thumbnails and posting secure deep links directly onto Blackboard Learn web pages; creating course collections that can be organized into folders and subfolders to correspond to a syllabus; and providing personal media galleries for student-generated content.

To learn more about the ShareStream Rich Media Platform’s functionality and feature set for enhancing online education, please visit ShareStream for Teaching and Learning.

“ShareStream’s Building Block provides educational institutions with a seamless extension for integrating cutting-edge media capability for asynchronous learning into the Release 9.1 environment,” stated David Weinstein, ShareStream’s CEO. “The ShareStream team is excited about showcasing its latest Rich Media Building Block and the success our customers have had running ShareStream with Blackboard solutions at BbWorld this week.”

"Rich media is at the core of developing 21st century skills and is a valuable addition to the overall teaching and learning experience. As campuses continue to grow these resources, they will increasingly need platforms to manage these assets as well as share the content across the campus," stated Matthew Small, Chief Business Officer of Blackboard.

About ShareStream Resources, LLC:

ShareStream provides secure, enterprise-wide rich media-management platforms and streaming, downloading, and podcasting services designed specifically for the unique needs of higher education. The ShareStream Rich Media Platform, developed in collaboration with higher education at Georgetown University, provides educational institutions with the technological tools specific to their workflow to allow them to operate as state-of-the-art educational media organizations to achieve the maximum benefit from their content. For more information, please visit www.sharestream.com.

Blackboard, the Blackboard Alliance Program, the Blackboard Developers Network, and Blackboard Building Blocks are the trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackboard Inc. All rights reserved.

Contacts

ShareStream Education Resources, LLC

Gayraud Townsend, (917) 658-3845

gayraud.townsend@sharestream.com