One of the main reasons we were drawn to Ensemble Video was it's emphasis for supporting multimedia in higher learning environments. Unlimited user accounts, security features and the ease of use has made Ensemble Video an effective solution. Prior to Ensemble Video we tested free sites like YouTube and Vimeo. However they didn't have the privacy settings we needed, especially for our user contributed content, and things were not in a centralized location. This made it more difficult to support and troubleshoot with our students.
I'd greatly recommend it to any teacher. It can be used in a variety of scenarios but mainly for speaking activities. It can work for example as an oral exam or oral evaluation, this I make them hiding it from other students' views. I also use it to analyze and comment about videos and readings. When students start talking and liking it, it's a killer. They start asking when is the next forum going to happen. However, something I do not recommend it for is role plays or collective readings, which I have tried and it fails miserably. This is because of timing, students upload the video at different moments and it is a hot mess. However, I am fine with the first part because it works pretty well.
Ensemble is a really excellent video content management solution for organisations that want to deploy onsite, enjoy a perpetual license and all the features found in competitive products costing many times more.
Ensemble does not try to be a monolithic application. Instead it leverages Sorenson Squeeze transcoder for ingest and Wowza's streaming media engine for playout. So it's pretty lightweight and is focused on content management tasks.
Flipgrid allows teachers to post a question to students on how they accomplished a particular task. This is important because it shows the students process and also gives them an opportunity to teach others.
Flipgrid allows teachers to make a "mixed tape" of student responses and use it for assessment. This allows teachers to show parents and administrators whether student growth.
Flipgrid has a great feature that allows teachers to post their Flipgrids with the community. The community can reuse the questions and edit them. This allows collaboration among fellow teachers.
Not only can teachers post questions but they can also record themselves asking the question. This is great for non-readers and English Language Learners.
There is one issue where sometimes the 'Add' button to add new media disappears, typically once per week. The workaround is to restart the physical server. While restarting the server each week can be a good thing, it would be nice not to have to keep a reminder on my calendar.
Flipgrid has been easy for both our students and staff to use. When there is an issue with the program, we can easily reach support, and the trouble is resolved in an extremely quick and timely manner.
Flipgrip is great for supporting educators. They provide opportunities for teachers to learn the program and become ambassadors for the program. They are also responsive to questions and concerns through many different modes. That includes online communities, email, and Facebook communities. They are eager to meet and troubleshoot with you and are also eager to meet educators at conferences and meetings.
Our campus has been using Ensemble Video since 2008. At the time we were unaware of Panopto or Kaltura, or other services. That said, I'm glad we picked Ensemble Video. Their team has been very supportive of us every step of the way. I'm not saying the other services would not be effective for our campus, but from what I've seen of those other services Ensemble best suits our needs and workflows.
Flipgrid is unique in its ability to allow students to create and share their own videos. I’m sure there are other ways to do this, but this is the first program that I’ve seen with these features. Students aren’t necessarily used to sharing academic videos of themselves, so it’s good practice!
This product is straightforward to implement and share across our building and district. As a large district, it was not difficult to train staff and have them feel at ease implementing the program.
ROI is sometimes tricky because systems, once implemented, are never welcomed by end users and thus, the ROI originally foreseen was more idealistic than real. Ensemble Video is almost universally well received by end users and thus, there is a real ROI that mostly relates to institutional effectiveness.
