Sweden To The HoverCam: "Det Ar Bra!"

My favorite things about Sweden are herring, midnight sun, cross country skiing and the teachers.

Each year in January we attend a conference called BETT, which is not just the largest education technology trade show in Britain, but all of Europe. And one of my favorite things about BETT is the Swedish teachers, almost 4,000 of them, who travel to warm winter London to see our products.

Our European Sales Manager, Anders Wik, is from Gothenburg and with “Gotteborg Humor” entertains the Swedish visitors to our trade show booth with tales about our products. It’s good fun and by the end of the 4-day exposition I’ve heard his

Anders setting up the HoverCam booth

at BETT in the UK, January 2013.

spiel so many times I’m speaking Swedish.

  This week, we will launch the HoverCam Mini 5, the world’s smallest document camera, in Sweden at SETT, Scandinavia’s largest education technology conference.

SETT is an acronym for Scandinavian Educational Technology Transformation. This is the 2^nd year for the conference, which attracted 4,500 teachers, ICT (Interactive Communications Technology) instructors and school administrators from 3 countries last year.

The goals for the conference are to introduce new digital technologies to the classroom to increase student achievement.

According to HoverCam’s Swedish resellers, the Mini is ideal for teachers who instruct at multiple schools, because it weighs less than 250 grams. The HoverCam Mini allows instructors to scan paper documents, and also to capture images with the camera that can be shown on interactive whiteboards in class.

“Many teachers are using the HoverCam to create instructional videos,” says Anders.

The HoverCam Mini 5 will be displayed at SETT by the Swedish instructional technology integrators AV Huset and ITM, which will highlight how HoverCam can be used by teachers as an instructional technology tool. (One of the highlights of BETT – the UK show – is meeting up with AV Huset and ITM on the streets of London for a concert, samplings of British ale and good stories.)

HoverCam’s products will also be showcased by two companies highlighting the HoverCam’s capability to work with OCR (optical character recognition) software, ICAP and Svensk Talteknologi.  OCR software allows text from book pages scanned with the HoverCam to be converted from text to speech, which is useful for students with visual impairments. The scan quality of the HoverCam works well with OCR software.

“The HoverCam is user friendly,” says Anders. “The software is in Swedish and easy to install since it is embedded in the unit,” he said. HoverCam products appeal to teachers in Sweden, Norway and Denmark because of the good video quality, ergonomic design and multi-functionality. “Each HoverCam is also a scanner and a video recorder,” says Anders, “And it’s affordable for schools.”

HoverCam products were first introduced to North America in 2010, where 100,000 HoverCam units have been installed in schools. We began working with Anders and  exporting HoverCams to Sweden in May, 2011.

This is how I sound after speaking Swedish for 4 days. (Full disclosure: I hired a Swede to play the part of me in the video.)



For additional information about the HoverCam in Sweden, please visit the company’s Swedish website www.thehovercam.se For additional information about the SETT Conference, which runs April 17 – 18 please visit www.settdagarna.se/en For additional information about HoverCam products in North America please visit www.thehovercam.com or email contact@thehovercam.com