The Director, Jaemes Shanley, gives an insight to digital LEARNING regarding the role and priorities of the solution provider company. Mimio is a retrofit technology that turns any board or firm flat projection surface into a full featured interactive WhiteBoard.
Jaemes Shanley
Director of sales – asia pacific, latin america, newyork, Mimio
Mimio interactive technology is known to be synonymous with advanced innovative, quality and award-winning educational classroom solutions. Could you elaborate on how your product matches up to the description?
Our mission is to deliver state-of-the-art interactive classroom solutions that enable more teachers and students to benefit from the pedagogical power and enhanced learning enabled by these systems. Our sustained commitment to ease of use and practical training resources are key to insuring that Mimio systems are actually used in the classroom.
How has Mimio made its products more affordable than its competitive products in the Indian market?
Mimio is a retrofit technology that turns any board or firm flat projection surface into a full featured interactive WhiteBoard. This eliminates cost at multiple levels including the product itself, freight and transport, installation, and service. Mimio is more affordable both in terms of acquisition cost and, importantly, on each metric of total cost of ownership.
Are there any collaborative and partnership initiatives that Mimio has entered?
Our relationship with Educomp Solutions is one instance, as described above. We are also working with other organizations in India, like CRISP (Consortium for Research In School Pedagogy) to introduce interactive classroom technology to higher education and other school systems in India.
Mimio has been used in special educational settings as well. How has Interactive Whiteboards been used as Inclusive Technology?
The initial applications for Mimio in special needs education centered on our ink capture capability which enabled a variety of students with physical or learning challenges to obtain real time and post class access to WhiteBoard notes, in a versatile digital data format. As applications and resources for interactive WhiteBoard teaching have expanded to include a rich variety of tools for special needs education, Mimio again provides a versatile affordable means for special students to participate more fully in dynamic learning environments. Mimio`s unique portability provides the option, if necessary, for these students to literally carry the technology with them from classroom to classroom.
Has Mimio done any prior research to make its products respond to specific classroom environments? Any statistics on the current usage trends in India?
We have had the honor and good fortune, in India, to be able to work with Educomp Solutions, providing an interactive WhiteBoard system for their market leading Smart class solutions. Their marketing and leading delivery of full spectrum technology to Indian schools has provided the perfect venue to Mimio`s advanced technology, to be paired with complete interactive learning systems created specifically for the Indian classroom and educational standards.
What are your future plans and strategies for capturing the Indian market?
As a priority market for Mimio, we will continue to work collaboratively with our partners in India to understand the market more comprehensively and to make sure its needs are prioritized in our substantial new product development initiatives.
How do you see your services cater to the requirements of the students, keeping in mind the dynamic cultural diversity of the Indian education system? Therefore, expectations from the market re manifold and multifold?
The main aim of any academician or a teacher is to make learning easier for the student and reduce their workload. Extramarks does all this and much more by providing continuous workshops, seminars for the teachers. It is our learner centric attitude and approach that has helped us gain the edge with the schools.
In which part of India do you think, your products are doing well? What could be the possible reasons?
The areas in which our products are doing exceptionally well are Rajasthan, North East and South India comprising of mainly Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. Reasons are varied from this diverse response. While the elitist schools of the country based in Rajasthan have takeour program enthusiastically, in North East it is the government schools that have shown their interest in our program. So, anyone who is motivated to change the regular school experience is our ideal partner. Are there any plans for expansion? Going by the great response we have
had in India, Extramarks.us is our recent launch that caters to the US students. All the study content on the US website is in accordance with California State University curriculum and it brings forth the best of eLearning attributes to its users. Further, we are planning to make way in other parts of the world like UK, Singapore and be a milestone in integrating technology with education.
Please share with our readers if Extramarks.com has entered into any collaborative or partnership initiatives?|
Extramarks is proud that various Governments at various levels has shown confidence in its offerings. We are the official education partner of NDTV for their online educational portal NDTVtutor.com. Also, Extramarks provides educational content for MyWay’s IPTV platform.
What are your plans for the future?
Our endeavour is to create easy to adopt solutions that have relevance and share the teacher and learners immediate study targets. We ourselves keep looking at our study modules and reinventing them in order to strike perfection. So, our future plan lies in getting the finesse with making inroads worldwide with our program
