Kaltura Delivers Video to Educational Institutions & Students

Kaltura's Open Source Video Platform Is Adopted by Leading Universities & Enterprises to Enhance Distance Learning, Staff Training, Display of Library Assets, Athletics, and Admissions


NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - October 5, 2009) - Kaltura, developer of the first open source online video platform, (www.kaltura.com) announced today that it has launched a full solution stack for adding video and rich media to educational institutions' online properties. Kaltura's open source platform enables institutions to easily integrate customized rich-media capabilities into their web sites, Learning Management Systems, research support system, internal digital repositories and online social networks. Kaltura's recently launched education solutions are already in use by leading universities such as the University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia and Penn State University. Kaltura has also initiated a partnership program with technology providers including 2tor, Inc., a private company that partners with preeminent institutions of higher education to deliver degree programs online (www.2tor.com), and Remote-Learner.net Inc., provider of educational technologies services to business, educational and governmental clients. (www.remote-learner.net)

"Online video has become an integral part of any educational institution's activities," said Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura Chairman & CEO. "Kaltura's open source platform provides these institutions the optimal solution: (1) It is completely flexible and easily integrated with other legacy learning systems; (2) It is provided either as a service, or as self-hosted software that is installed behind the institution's firewall under their complete privacy and control; (3) It includes custom tools that were developed specifically for the education vertical; and lastly (4) It is offered at the lowest price point in the market."

Kaltura offers a range of video solutions for education institutions, including:

--  Video for teaching and learning - institutions engage students with
    high quality video, inside and outside of the classroom. Kaltura provides
    pre-integrated solutions that work seamlessly with leading Learning
    Management Platforms (e.g. Blackboard, Moodle, and Sakai), as well as with
    lecture capture and presentation systems.
    
--  Video for distance education -- institutions enable remote online
    classes and courses, as well as new full blown online degrees for
    international students.
    
--  Video for social activities -- clubs, student groups, research
    centers, faculty websites, and individual students and faculty leverage
    Kaltura's out-of-the-box video extensions (e.g. for  WordPress, MediaWiki,
    Drupal, ELGG) to support and augment students' and professors' online
    social activities.
    
--  Video for collaboration and interaction -- institutions enable groups
    to interact with one another by way of importing and uploading user-
    generated clips, commenting and reviewing, and collaborating with other
    students and faculty in creating, remixing, and annotating content.
    
--  Rich-media for libraries -- institutions make their multimedia archive
    accessible by the community, which is empowered to search, view, share,
    index and annotate content, and even contribute new content to the archive.
    
--  Video for marketing -- institutions produce marketing campaigns that
    keep prospective students and alumni informed, engaged, and involved.
    
--  Advanced rich-media editing tools -- institutions and students utilize
    Kaltura's online editors to insert annotations and comments, remix video
    clips, and to synchronize a viewing experience for video clips coupled with
    slides of PowerPoint presentations.
    
--  Video for events and conferences -- institutions use Kaltura's
    tailored application to upload, organize, publish, share, and archive rich-
    media content from events and conferences.
    
--  Video for alumni -- institutions enhance the engagement levels of
    alumni through providing them audio-visual information and promotions for
    continuing education programs.
    
--  Video for sports -- institutions and students upload, display, share,
    and syndicate clips relating to the institution's sports teams and events.
    
--  Emergency preparedness & flu packages -- institutions mitigate risk
    and improve their preparedness by enabling students and faculty to continue
    their education at a distance in cases of quarantine and sickness.
    

Kaltura also provides with its platform optional ancillary services, including custom integration and development services, content streaming and hosting, transcoding, and analytics. Institutions that utilize Kaltura's platform and services enjoy a one-stop-shop for all of their rich-media needs.

"Kaltura's hosting services paired with their excellent support team helped to make our recent online course an absolute success," said Marni Baker Stein, Director of Program Development, The College of Liberal and Professional Studies, University of Pennsylvania. "We were able to effectively stream HD quality video to 576 students from 43 countries each week. Kaltura's partnership in this ambitious venture was invaluable."

David Germano, Director of SHANTI at University of Virginia: "Kaltura is a key component of SHANTI's Community Tools initiative. We are creating an ecology of high-impact, low-threshold web applications for students and faculty to synergize teaching, learning, research, and service. A key part of this ecology is audio and video asset management, and Kaltura's ability to seamlessly integrate with a variety of applications, from WordPress to Sakai, speeds our creation of this ecology. With it, SHANTI is unleashing the creative energies of faculty, staff and students in myriad exciting new ways. Kaltura is catalyzing and empowering our community!"

"2tor recently partnered with the University of Southern California's prestigious Rossier School of Education, using Kaltura's advanced video capabilities to launch the MAT@USC, an online Master of Arts in Teaching program," said James Kenigsberg of 2tor, Inc. "Together with Kaltura, we developed a custom-tailored video experience for the program's faculty and students."

"Several of our 300 university customers have added Kaltura to their Moodle deployments" said Jason Cole, COO of Remote-Learner. "Working with Kaltura, we can now move the e-learning experience beyond words on the page and include real-life performances. Kaltura's easy to use, low cost media platform will have significant impact on teacher training, performing arts education, language learning, physical education and distance learning."

Kaltura Inspire Webinar: Expanding Education with Online Video

On October 7, 2009 at 2:30pm ET Kaltura will be conducting a webinar where we will discuss the various ways that online video can broaden educational activities across the institution.

Registration: http://www.kaltura.org/kaltura-inspire-webinar

Speakers and topics will include:

--  Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura CEO, will say a few words of introduction
    
--  Leah Belsky, Kaltura Director of Strategic Accounts, will present an
    overview of Kaltura's video solutions for educational institutions
    
--  David Germano, Director of SHANTI at University of Virginia, will
    present an array of forward-looking programs that are currently being
    implemented by the school using Kaltura's platform
    
--  Chris Millet, Manager of Advanced Learning Projects, Education
    Technology Services (ETS), The Pennsylvania State University -- will
    present how Penn State is using Kaltura's video solutions to enhance its
    learning experience
    
--  Jason Cole, Chief Operating Officer, Remote-learner.net -- will
    present Remote Learner's partnership with Kaltura and its enhanced Moodle
    services with advanced rich-media capabilities
    

Learn more about Kaltura's video solutions for education at http://corp.kaltura.com/solutions/education.

About Kaltura

Kaltura provides the world's first Open Source Online Video Platform. With more than 37,000 active publishers, Kaltura's flexible framework empowers educational institutions and enterprises to add advanced interactive video functionality into websites, libraries, learning management systems, and lecture delivery tools. Founded in 2006, Kaltura's open source code is available as a free Software Development Kit and as downloadable packages for leading platforms -- such as Moodle, Drupal, WordPress and MediaWiki. Kaltura also provides supplementary paid services including maintenance, support, integration, professional development, streaming and hosting, ad serving, content syndication, and aggregation of related third party services. Since its public launch, New York-based Kaltura has won numerous awards, such as Microsoft and TheMarker's 'Most Promising Start-up in Israel' for 2009, TechCrunch40 People's Choice award, Mashable's 'Open Web' award, AlwaysOn's top 250 global company and top 100 media company awards, and TV Week's 5 Video Startups to Watch in 2009. For more information, visit www.kaltura.com. Visit Kaltura's open source community at www.kaltura.org.

Contact Information: Lisa Bennett Kaltura (212) 981-3965 lisa.bennett@kaltura.com