Latest Release of Pick-n-Play™ Includes Additional Functionality for Collaboration, Personalized Learning, Mobile Media, and Student-Generated Content
EDUCAUSE 2011
PHILADELPHIA–(BUSINESS WIRE)–ShareStream, provider of the pioneering ShareStream Media Platform for Education, announced today the availability of a new release of Pick-n-Play™ at the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference.
With the advent of online video, audio, and podcasts, rich media is proliferating across university and college campuses and K-12 at a rapid rate, and has quickly become an integral component of instructional technology, distance learning, library collections, digital repositories, and educational institutions’ public websites. The ShareStream Media Platform, initially developed in collaboration with Georgetown University, is a turnkey system for the full lifecycle of media, complete with digital rights management for enterprises, designed specifically to fulfill rising demand from educational institutions for integrating media into online courses and communications.
Pick-n-Play, the faculty and student-facing application of ShareStream, provides nontechnical end-users with an easy-to-use and interactive media application for uploading, tagging, browsing, playing and searching for media. Pick-n-Play complements MediaManager and MediaMigrator, the core administrative components of the ShareStream Media Platform, to provide educational institutions and organizations with a comprehensive media platform for both nontechnical users and media specialists within a single system.
Some of the highlights of the latest release of Pick-n-Play include exciting new functionality for student-generated content, collaboration, and personalized learning, and mobile media, all areas where ShareStream’s product-development team observed a growing interest from the educational-technology community.
“Pick-n-Play provides an intuitive and engaging user experience that is in keeping with what learners are accustomed to using on consumer Internet sites for media,” stated David Weinstein, ShareStream’s CEO. “This enables students to focus their energy on learning the course media content assigned to them, not on how to use the learning technology.”
Key features and functionality provided in Pick-n-Play include:
- ShareStream’s Media Dropbox for Student-Generated Content, which allows students to submit media to instructors for assessment and commentary, or to fellow students enrolled in the course for collaboration
- Drag-and-Drop Upload for nontechnical users with no media expertise that allows authorized users to upload media, which is then automatically compressed and transcoded to the appropriate formats
- “My Workspace” Media Page, a personal media gallery and repository for faculty, and if assigned the required privileges, students and administrators
- Media Extensions for LMSs:
Pick-n-Play includes extensions for the predominant LMSs. ShareStream’s Media Extensions for LMSs provide both API-level integration with LMSs, and single sign-on complete with role-mapping between the LMS and the ShareStream Rich Media Platform. - Features for Collaboration and Interactivity, including Personal Playlists and a Discussion Forum with Time-Stamped Commenting, which facilitates an online conversation among students and faculty around media
- Secure, Copy-Protected Media Delivery through Streamed Video, Audio and Streaming to Mobile Devices
- Automatic Bandwidth-Detection and Adaptive Streaming Functionality for media delivery to users with wide ranges of Internet connectivity
- Podcasts into iTunes™ and RSS Feeds in Both an Authenticated and Open Environment
- Publishing Tools, including Embedded Thumbnails and Media Hyperlinks in both authenticated and open environment
- End-User Meta-Tagging (as well as more extensive metadata, including the major metadata standards for administrative users)
- Robust Digital Rights Management that allows institutions to control access to content and secure media during delivery, as well as manage digital media licenses
Availability and Demonstrations
ShareStream, which offers its product as either a software-as-a-service (SaaS Video Platform) or an on-premises solution, will make the latest release of Pick-n-Play commercially available in late-October 2011. ShareStream will be demonstrating the latest product updates at EDUCAUSE 2011 at booth 100 this week in Philadelphia, as well as during a live Webinar on Wednesday, October 26th. For more information on the Webinar, including how to register, visit www.sharestream.com.
About ShareStream:
ShareStream provides secure, enterprise-wide rich-media management platforms and online video solutions designed specifically for the unique need of educational institutions. The ShareStream Media Platform for Education, 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, on campus and beyond. For more information, please visit www.sharestream.com or follow ShareStream on Twitter at @ShareStreamVid to receive the latest company updates.
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Gayraud Townsend, 917-658-3845
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