September 10, 2007

Sclipo Releases Live Video Teaching For Hire

Nick Gonzalez

15 comments »

Sclipo, a video how-to site similar to SuTree and 5Min, lets you post short recorded educational videos. Recorded video, however, has it’s limits. It’s largely a one-size-fits-all solution that doesn’t let you clarify your instructions or adjust according to the background of your pupils. To confront these short comings, Sclipo has softly launched a new live video feature, “Sclipo Live”. Sclipo Live lets you teach for money one-on-one through live video conferencing. It’s currently available by invite only.

The live video sessions are organized into a directory listing the time of the session, who’s leading it, and what it’s about along with a price. The actual teaching session features live video feeds of the teacher and student along with chat. The whole session is recorded and synced with the chat for easy review later. After the session is concluded, the student can rate their teacher.

The feature set is currently pretty basic. There are now built in testing features or free-form whiteboard. Screen sharing is a noticeably absent feature.

Sclipo joins a host of other companies aiming to monetize user generated content through a consulting marketplace. Ether and Wengo are two services aimed at helping professionals charge for their consulting time. Ether does this through a pay per call model while Wengo does it through a paid a one-on-one video conference.

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 2:42 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Sclipo launches SclipoLive - a pioneer webcam teaching system : Sclipo Blog

September 14th, 2007 at 11:13 am

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Ryan Milnes

September 10th, 2007 at 2:54 pm

I will try this for sure.
Word Hugger

September 10th, 2007 at 3:07 pm

It is a neat idea, but I don’t know if it would take off without a lot of funding.
underratedsites.com

September 10th, 2007 at 3:53 pm

I really like this idea. I have been looking for a site where I can create educational videos for remote teaching.

Great job Sclipo team
Steve Ballmer

September 10th, 2007 at 3:56 pm

Hmmm … Work out the bugs and I’ll consider buying them.

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Dominic

September 10th, 2007 at 4:05 pm

This is the type of site VCs turn away from. How sad too. Anything practical, intelligent, and useful doesn’t push their greed buttons. They want S P L A S H and P I Z A Z Z. F*ckin idiots.

Someone needs to put some serious money behind this and get off the other bullshit sites.
Anonymous Coward

September 10th, 2007 at 4:31 pm

Seems like it’ll be quite a good tool for cam girls/boys… private sessions… recorded material (good for clients)… charge by the minute… text chat and live cam feeds…
Robert Einspruch

September 10th, 2007 at 5:23 pm

This is a really interesting concept - so interesting that we considered pursuing it 18 months ago. Instead we decided on the tutoring market. To Dominic’s point, this is exactly the kind of thing VCs ignore - requires too long to develop and they simply are not patient enough to stick with you. Unfortunately I speak from first hand experience!

http://www.ziizoo.com
Free Image Hosting for Bloggers

September 10th, 2007 at 6:53 pm

Vide uploading sites as a concept has been a bit overdone.

Everybody is doing it so there is no niche segment left.

Then some startups try to differentiate themselves in such non-unique segments.

Having said that…i still believe that there is a market for everything and everybody..so keep it up.

http://www.imageblox.com
Free Image Hosting for Bloggers
Julia

September 11th, 2007 at 8:13 am

They’re boring!
What’s all this green? Who made the UI? And why don’t they have anything original on their site? Yet another Youtube wannabe…
James Cook

September 11th, 2007 at 8:15 am

I think the difficult part of the SclipoLive service is that they do not broker the payment between the teacher and student. Payment arrangement and collection is the teacher’s domain and can be done offline. Sclipo receives a fee for providing the forum (and are waiving the fee until 9/30).

It won’t be long before the teacher tells the student to “skype me” and gets the side effect of conferencing, recording, whiteboarding, and oh yeah, no fees.

To be fair, Sclipo does provide a means of locating the instructor, seeing what times he is available to teach, and a feedback form. If the instructor posts a free video of a calculus tutoring session on YouTube with a “contact me” ad, they have probably accomplished much greater market penetration.
Alfred

September 11th, 2007 at 2:27 pm

I like Sclipo’s approach. In response to James Cook (#10) and from what I have been able to find out, they are approaching the class payment very similar to how eBay handles payment of auctioned goods, a proven model so far.
As I see it, and as long as their service fees are kept low, Sclipo is providing a really valuable service to end users. They are not only helping to find and rate teachers/students; they are also recording the class and storing it for an unlimited time.
I’m definitely keeping an eye on Sclipo.
Robert Copper

September 12th, 2007 at 1:05 am

wow (9. Julia ) seems like you dont get the point. Here we are talking about Sclipo Live, In my opinion a great product that needs a lot of improvements but is far for being a YOU TUBE.

About the payment method, I think that they are doing right using the Ebay method.

I will looking this site. looking good.
Molly

September 12th, 2007 at 3:11 am

Um, is it just me or can teachers already do this for free with video conferencing apps like ooVoo? - just like James said above.

I write for ooVooworld, the unofficial WOM world about ooVoo, and I’ve spoken to tutors using ooVoo for exactly this kind of thing - with audio and video quality now matching professional apps there’s no reason not to use it for this kind of thing and it requires no special equipment or outlay on the part of tutor or pupil.

Sure, Sclipo helps you locate pupils - but this is most usually done through word of mouth or the other established educational sites out there.

Why not save the fee and do it yourself?
Hao Hao Report

September 13th, 2007 at 7:59 pm

It’s a neat idea, and Sclipo seems like a legit site, which makes me wonder why I’ve been receiving nothing but spam from them (finally blocked their link, and they posted a link to this article instead).

Doesn’t matter what they do now, or how great they are - their image is tarnished in my mind.