Panopto

Panopto Inc.
Private Company
Industry Computer software, blended learning, lecture recording
Headquarters Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Area served
 Worldwide
Website www.panopto.com

Panopto is a software company that provides lecture recording, screencasting, video streaming, and video content management software, which is often used in E-learning environments.[1] The company was founded as a spinout of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in 2007 by two of its professors—William Guttman (current Executive Chairman) and William Scherlis—in addition to current Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Eric Burns. According to Malia Spencer of the Pittsburgh Business Journal, the company is "based on technology that can capture, stream and archive video and other media that are frequently used in presentations, lectures or training."[2] The company is best known as a provider of online lecture technology.

The Founders

William L. Guttman is currently a partner with TL Ventures[3] and Special Adviser to the Provost of Carnegie Mellon University.[4] Guttman co-founded Carnegie Mellon's CyLab and has built several other companies (such as NASDAQ-listed Printcafe, now a division of Electronics for Imaging)[5] and remains at the helm of Panopto.[3] Eric Burns, also still with the company, was the co-inventor of the SlideCentric and CourseCast software at CMU that led to the founding of the company.[6] In a 2011 interview Burns described the company by stating that, "Panopto makes it easy for big organizations to record and search all of their video content and presentations. Examples: a big software company creating a searchable library of presentations by experts, or a university recording and broadcasting every lecture in every classroom, forever."[7]

Company History

According to Burns, the idea for the company came to the founders in 2002 as the cost of storing video images on computer became cheaper than storing the same footage on videotape.[7] Panopto software has, since that point, offered the recording of university lectures and business presentations, the streaming of live events, the managing of video libraries, the capability of video search, and other knowledge management services.[8] Panopto software is capable of both screencasting and slidecasting.

By 2008 over 100,000 lectures had been viewed via Panopto lecture capturing technology.[9] Panopto has partnered with some of the largest educational companies and organizations in the world since its founding. In 2009 the company announced that it had partnered with Moodle's open source project to provide its lecture capturing software to over twenty million users worldwide.[10] In 2010 Macmillan Publishers announced a partnership with Panopto to produce a software called Panopto Fusion, which allowed individual professors to utilize lecture capture software if their institutions had not yet partnered with the company.[11] In 2011, Pearson Education announced it would sell Panopto products to its customer base, and according to Dian Schaffhauser of Campus Technology magazine, Pearson stated that it would "work directly with administrators and faculty to integrate Panopto into their program offerings".[12] In addition to its lecture capturing software Focus,[13] the company also offers tools that allow videos to be searched, viewed, and edited on the Internet. Today the company is currently headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with additional offices in Seattle and London.[7]

In early 2011 Panopto raised $4 million from a consortium of 17 investors.[2] By the end of the year, Panopto had signed licensing agreements with 400 separate universities globally.[14] In 2012 the company released an iOS app version of its software allowing students to utilize Panopto's media software on their iPhones and iPads to record media and submit the recordings as assignments. The program allows students to store their work in a dropbox that can be altered by the student, and which their professor can also view, with the goal of producing an additional level of interaction between pupil and teacher.[15] An additional product capability called Unison was released in 2011 that allowed the uploading of existing video into Panopto's media library.[16] The software is also compatible with IMS Global Learning Consortium cross-platform incorporation tools, specifically with the university standard software integration program Learning Tools Interoperability.[15] According to Professor Michael Weston of the University of Houston–Victoria, Panopto was helpful in cases when it came to athletes or other students that were required to miss classes in order to take care of other responsibilities. Meanwhile other professors have integrated the software directly into their courses in a process of blended learning.[17]

Current Software

As of 2012, Panopto offers two units of software—Focus and Unison. Focus is software that records and live-streams presentations, lectures, demos, and so forth, and then stores them in the Panopto video content management system.[18] Unison is software that imports existing videos into the Panopto video CMS.[19] Both Focus and Unison come with the web-based content management system, a web-based media editor, the ability to search within videos, and developer APIs for integrating Panopto with existing content- and learning-management systems.[18][19]

External links

References

  1. ↑ "Police and Local Briefs". Fort Wayne News-Sentinel. November 19, 2009. Retrieved February 15, 2012.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Malia Spencer (January 12, 2011). "Panopto raises $4M from investors". Pittsburgh Business Times. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Panopto Completes $4M Equity Offering - cbl". City Biz List. January 4, 2011. Retrieved March 1, 2012.
  4. ↑ "List of Economists At Carnegie Mellon". Carnegie Mellon University. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
  5. ↑ "Business-Combination Transaction Communication". SEC. March 6, 2003. Retrieved March 1, 2012.
  6. ↑ "Eric Burns". Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 John Cook (July 27, 2011). "Startup Spotlight: Carnegie Mellon transplant takes root in Seattle with Panopto". Geek Wire. Retrieved February 15, 2012.
  8. ↑ "Panopto Resources". Butler University. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
  9. ↑ David Nagel (January 8, 2008). "Panopto Makes Lecture Capture System Free for Educators". THE Journal. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
  10. ↑ "Panopto Delivers Leading CourseCast Lecture Capture Solution to Moodle Community". BusinessWire. August 12, 2009. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
  11. ↑ "Panopto Fusion Puts the Power of Lecture Capture Directly Into the Hands of Faculty". MacMillan Publishers. Oct 12, 2010. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
  12. ↑ Dian Schaffhauser (May 12, 2011). "Pearson, Panopto Collaborate To Deliver Lecture Capture Software". Campus Technology. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
  13. ↑ "SIIA Honors Promising New Education Technologies". SIIA. December 1, 2010. Retrieved February 12, 2012.
  14. ↑ "Vendor Notebook: athenahealth launches real-time physician performance dashboard". Healthcare IT News. September 9, 2011. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Dian Schaffhauser (January 20, 2012). "New Panopto Adds Recording to iOS Devices". THE Journal. Retrieved February 15, 2012.
  16. ↑ Joe Brockmeier (August 2, 2011). "Panopto Multimedia Management and Capture Tools Get HD, Social, and Remixing Features". Retrieved February 13, 2012.
  17. ↑ "New software at UHV helps students connect to professor lectures". Victoria Advocate. February 12, 2011. Retrieved February 14, 2012.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Tim Sohn (September 14, 2011). "Panopto Focus 4.0 Gets Moodle 2.0 Integration". THE Journal. Retrieved March 5, 2012.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Healthcare IT News Staff (September 9, 2011). "Vendor Notebook: athenahealth launches real-time physician performance dashboard". Healthcare IT News. Retrieved March 5, 2012.