SONY LAUNCHES VISION EXCHANGE

Sony ANZ has launched an intuitive collaboration solution for education and corporate users called Vision Exchange. It brings together students, lecturers and presenters in a dynamic workgroup-based environment that encourages creative discussion and knowledge exchange. Teams can brainstorm and work collaboratively, wirelessly sharing content from everyone’s laptop or tablet. Participants can be brought in to join the discussion by adding a video connection to remote locations, making teamwork truly global.

Traditional ‘one-way’ lectures are being steadily replaced with interactive methods that encourage deeper student engagement and understanding. “There are other collaborative tools out there, reflecting a major shift from passive to active learning that’s become increasingly prevalent over the last decade”, comments Brad Hanrahan, Group Manager, B&I Sony Professional Solutions ANZ. “But until now this fast-growing market hasn’t been offered a workgroup-focused solution for today’s BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) environments with the power, flexibility and intuitive appeal of Vision Exchange.”

Vision Exchange with Active Learning license utilises a simple Pod PC structure and Sony’s Pod PC software (PES-C10). It is easy to configure, scalable, and capable of supporting up to 10 groups of BYOD.

Students can share content within the classroom via their own device. With the available mirroring function, each student can easily show what they have worked on and findings from other sources. Learning from each other is a breeze as they can brainstorm and work collaboratively.

Facilitators or lecturers acting as administrator of the system, can easily share materials to all screens. They are also capable of monitoring each group’s progress and quickly provide assistance while moving around the room. Further, they can select any group’s presentation to display on either the main shared screen or the Pod screens of all groups for review or discussion alongside annotation function.

Remote Communication lets workgroups connect with other sites using standards-based videoconference systems such as Sony’s SRG-120DU PTZ camera and PCS-A1 microphone. Participants can share not only content from their own devices (laptops, tablets and smartphones) images, but annotations overlaid on images or whiteboard description in real-time.

Utilising a separate recording server, Vision Exchange together with a PEQA-C30 license allow users to stream the discussion and lecture content displayed on the main shared screen to another location or devices using either multicast or unicast with RTP (H.264/AAC). This allows the session to be recorded for future distribution or archiving purposes.

The new Vision Exchange active learning solution for higher education and corporate use will be available in Australia and New Zealand from December 2017 onwards.

Sony: pro.sony.com.au