How do you think can technology improve learning? All of us today are passionate about education and hope it holds for changing the world.
We’re also huge believers in technology and its power to truly improve educational outcomes, so the straight answer to the question would be that, if we are provided with the tools and services needed to support rich and engaging learning environments through the use of highly personalized instructional strategies and practices. This exactly is the mission of Torsh, regarded as today’s one room school house, which is a platform that develops technology enabled solutions that help bring our education system into the 21st century.
Torsh helps teachers pursue greatness by ‘unlocking the instructional black box’ in ways that demystify the art of highly effective instruction. Its powerful tools and services help educators deepen their understanding of what is happening in the classroom while simultaneously enabling them to track how these trends impact student learning.
Its product portfolio is deep and varying and is built on a sophisticated data platform that allows us to generate insights into teacher and student interactions drawn from classroom videos generated by teachers.
Here’s what Torsh offers:
An online video repository that allows schools to store unlimited amounts of instructional videos coupled with a private social network designed to foster and support professional learning communities.
Remote coaching services that allow its customers to gain easy access to coaches anywhere in the US, to provide feedback to teachers asynchronously and on demand.
Best practices video database showcasing exemplars of great teaching that demonstrates and facilitates differentiated instruction and is aligned with the common core standards and is curated by thousands of experts nationwide.
A data analytics platform that generates a set of key performance indicators which teachers can review daily to better understand how their lessons and instructions impact student learning.
The first and the only product developed by Torsh till date, is called ‘Talent’. It is a SaaS based online video repository and social network that simplifies the process of capturing and storing classroom videos. It makes teachers’ lives easier; helps improve their practice and deliver relevant and actionable data needed to provide highly differentiated instruction to their students.
To illustrate Talent’s functioning, suppose that a teacher decides he would like to record his Math class; he proceeds by doing the following:
Opens the talent mobile app on his smartphone and selects the amount of video he would like to record.
Then attaches his smartphone to the Swivl, a low-cost device that enables high quality hands free video recording in any classroom.
As the teacher moves about the class teaching, the Swivel tracks his movements while his smartphone records video.
Once done the talent app auto uploads the video to his account on his school’s private social network in the cloud.
The teacher can now access his video at any time and from anywhere.
He has full control of all videos uploaded to his account and he can use them to reflect on his classroom instruction or make notes about areas of improvement, share the video with mentors or peers.
With talent’s private social network, administrators can rest assured that their video stays within their school’s community and will not end up on sites like YouTube, Facebook or Twitter.
The key features of Talent are:
Automatic Transcription and Indexing: With the use of sophisticated speech to text and semantic search technologies, Talent automatically transcribes, indexes and tags your video for easy search and retrieval within minutes of upload.
Private Social Network: Enables customers to deploy their own branded social learning community where teachers, administrators and coaches can gather to share, collaborate and disseminate information about instructional trends, best practices and other relevant education issues.
Video Annotation & Feedback: Enables rapid feedback cycles by providing flexible annotation tools that allow coaches and peers to add comments and notes directly to teacher videos.
One-Click Capture & Upload: Is coupled with Swivl, a battery operated rotating base that uses your phone to capture classroom video and upload it directly to your private account in the cloud where you can share it with peers and coaches.
Torsh offers all this in a scalable, cost effective way. To avail of its services, contact its team by submitting a form online. It is committed to helping teachers, administrators and students achieve success one step at a time, one day at a time and one video at a time.
I feel that such a platform is a godsend and will improve the way professional development is delivered in the 21st century. We would love to hear from you of what you think of Torsh, clarify your doubts and provide us with suggestions, if any about the same. The Comment Box awaits you.
