Mevo in Education Setting
The Logitech Mevo Camera is an astounding video camera that offers much opportunity for schools to capture and share their events either live or on demand. We have been placing Mevo's in partner schools and developing their use.
Over the last 18 months I’ve been working closely with partner schools to develop their strategic use of video for teaching and learning, collaboration and marketing.
A significant part of the success of the schools has been down to their use of Logitech Mevo Start cameras. In our partner schools they now wouldn’t be without them and the Logitech Mevo Starts have become a goto resource for the quality recording or live streaming of school events.
I have worked in EdTech for 15 years and prior to that was a teacher and senior leader in schools for another 15 years. I believe the Mevo Start to be one of the most important products that I have experienced during my career and believe that it can be a game changer for video in education in so many ways. Reflecting on my experiences of video in the classroom as a teacher, through marketing schools and more recently in capturing teachers training for mentoring I don’t believe that there is a more able multidisciplinary product than the Mevo Start camera with accompanying app.
Used as a single unit or in multiples for various camera angles the Mevo Start is astoundingly simple to deploy with fantastic video and audio results. I have fairly tough criteria about how technology should work, and most importantly enhance a teaching situation and not detract from it. So often than not technology in education has what I call, “the cost of distraction”, and the Mevo Start doesn’t, it actually adds excitement as to what can be achieved.
The Mevo video quality is superb, copes with varying lighting conditions impeccably and even when fully digitally zoomed in provides a great image.
Using the onboard mics is good for most applications but having the option to easily add a wireless mic through the jack socket is superb. This really does make the Mevo Start very adaptable to different uses.
The Mevo Start app is well thought through, intuitive and provides functionality that you’d expect to find on high end broadcast equipment. It is very easy to create a multi camera feeling from just one camera using the angles and switching. If there is one feature that I absolutely love it's the slow panning; a brilliant way to build movement, interest and creativity into the video being shot. Students absolutely love this functionality and its ability to create elaborate panning shots in moments spontaneously.
Moving to a multi camera set up is easy and when used with the students they are thrilled at the next dimension that this creates. It feels very professional and gives the students a range of functionality to work with. Students can be individually controlling each camera whilst each image is mixed into the production switcher.
We work with the Nagasoft NS Caster video production tablet. It is NDI enabled and as such we have used it to bring in 3 Mevo Start sources and mixed them with other SDI and HDMI signals. The NS Caster is wifi enabled also and so this really does provide schools with considerable flexibility and enablement. Because of their discrete size, battery life and the fixing opportunities that the Mevo Start’s present they offer huge opportunities for simple school deployment and use.
As an ex Design and Technology teacher with patents to my name I think that the build quality of the Mevo Start is exceptional. It really does have a quality feel to it in every way and the clever fixing adapter nut is a good example of the depth of thought that has been put into the design. By simply unscrewing and flipping the adaptor nut over or removing it you can attach the Mevo Start directly to a ¼, ⅜ or ⅝ inch tripod or microphone stands commonplace in a school. I’ve used all manner of tripod, music stand, mic stand and clamping devices from g-clamp type devices to clamp to bars through to clipboard type clips that easily mount onto shelves to get interesting and different camera angles where normal cameras would be hard to position due to their weight and size.
Recently a former teacher colleague of mine passed away and I was asked by the family to capture and live stream out the funeral service. It was my pleasure to and this was ably achieved in a very discrete manner in the church such that the family didn't really notice the Mevo Start cameras. Turning off the indicator lights on the cameras added to the discrete capability.
The wifi capability of the Mevo Start is astounding and I have used it successfully at 40m line of sight with Ubiquiti network access points. The hero shot for me is the one here from Orwell Park School where the cricket umpires both had Mevo Starts on small tripods and were able to live stream the cricket action direct from the square. The Mevo streams were captured by a Windows PC running OBS and then live streamed privately to parents behind a password on the website. Over a hundred parents logged in and watched the match at peak and enjoyed watching even though they couldn't be at the school through COVID restrictions.
The Mevo offers many many opportunities to enhance remote or hybrid learning; from taking a wider angle of the classroom to give a better experience to the remote viewer, through to empowering the teacher with a wifi enabled camera to zoom in on demonstrations, books or examples. If I was still teaching Design and Technology I could well imagine setting up a Mevo to look at my demonstrations and then asking a student to use the Mevo app on their device to manipulate the image; pan, zooming and mixing in order to give a more interesting and engaging recording or live stream.
Mevo is NDI enabled which can take its use to a whole different level. NDI stands for Network Delivered Interface and the easiest way of describing it is in the same way as you now just connect a printer to the network and your computer or devices sees it, then that is the same with the Mevo Start. Attach it to your wifi or use the cable adapter to plug it into a network socket and then providing you have the correct credentials your device can see and use the Mevo Start. This means that cameras can be anywhere on wifi in your classroom or indeed as some of our schools have done, used camera angles into video production mixes that are in entirely different areas of the school.
Orwell Park School has used Mevos on wifi at various locations around its school to bring in different video shots of its cross country races, its memorial parade and numerous other sporting and musical events. Oswestry School has deployed technical solutions on its school network so that cameras can be used anywhere in the school and their live feeds brought back to a media room for mixing into live streams or recordings. Most recently it used Mevo Starts in the school chapel and on the parade ground to capture its remembrance service and make it available to parents watching from home online.
The Windows and Mac apps make bringing the Mevo Starts video stream into a Zoom, Teams or Google meet call easy. Now that hybrid learning is commonplace in order to mitigate COVID issues the Mevo Start offers an exciting step up in functionality and the potential for online engagement.
In our work with our partner schools the Mevo Starts have become loved because they do a great job easily and efficiently. I believe that the Mevo Start camera platform combined with NDI can enable so much in the education environment to capture and share all the wonderful things that students, teachers and their school communities achieve everyday and this is where ultimately I believe that the Mevo will leave an amazing step change legacy:
“That of enabling schools to easily capture and share all that they do through video such that it raises the self esteem of learners, their teachers, the parents and ultimately the whole community which the school serves.”
COVID has made all of us realise the importance of education and the Mevo Start could substantially benefit education in delivering teaching and learning, collaboration and marketing.
If you would like to discuss the opportunities for Mevo Starts in your educational setting then please reach out and we would be delighted to share practice so far.
Andrew Goff
+44 7967565882
