THE Journal — eLearning/Web
Library of Congress Taps Flickr Users To Tag Historic Photos
The Library of Congress has launched a pilot program with photo-sharing site Flickr to enable people to enhance the metadata on visual materials in its collection.
(2/19/2008)
Director 11 Coming in March
Adobe this week announced the impending release of Director 11, the first major update to the company's multimedia authoring tool in about four years. The new version expands 3D features with a new physics engine and new DirectX support and also introduces parity between JavaScript and Lingo for scripting. The new version will ship in March for Mac OS X (Intel) and Windows.
(2/19/2008)
Microsoft To Pilot 'Intellectual Property Rights Education' Curriculum
Following on the heels of its newly released survey on illegal downloading among students, Microsoft this week announced that it will launch a new curriculum for middle school and high school students focusing on intellectual property.
(2/15/2008)
WSO2 Unveils Open Source Mashup Server
WSO2 is offering a new open source mashup server and has rolled out a beta of a new hosted mashup service. Both fall under Apache open source licensing and the WSO2 Mashup Server 1.0 represents "the first open source [server] solution for mashups," according to Jonathan Marsh, WSO2's director of mashups.
(2/15/2008)
PA Educators Receive $100,000 Verizon Grant
The Verizon Foundation has awarded $100,000 to the Pennsylvania Department of Education. The grant will be used to provide access to Thinkfinity resources and training for teachers in the use of those resources and to raise awareness of the Thinkfinity service.
(2/14/2008)
Blackboard Trial Against Desire2Learn Goes to Court
Just a week after higher education software maker Blackboard announced "tremendous" financial results for the year, it is finally facing off in a small-town Texas court against rival Desire2Learn in a patent dispute over e-learning software. Blackboard is seeking $17 million in lost revenue as well as an injunction against the company, which is based in Canada.
(2/14/2008)
CPS Renews SchoolNet for Instructional Management
The Chicago Public School system has renewed its contract with Schoolnet, according to information released by the company this week. Schoolnet provides data, assessment, and curriculum management services and technologies through its Schoolnet Instructional Management Solution. The new deal renews Schoolnet's contract as the provider of the district's curriculum and instructional management system for three more years.
(2/13/2008)
Sony Kicks Off High School Video Contest
Sony Creative Software, developer of the Vegas video production suite, has opened up its first Technology in Motion: Vision of the Future video contest for high schoolers. The competition includes $20,000 in prizes per winner for original video creations. Free software and other materials are being provided to participating schools.
(2/12/2008)
ALEKS Debuts Online Math System
Education technology developer ALEKS has debuted a new online math tool called QuickTables. Targeted toward grade 3 and up, the system is designed to provide math practice coupled with individualized assessments for immediate remediation.
(2/12/2008)
Elluminate Builds Bridge to Moodle
Collaborative technology developer Elluminate has brought its Live! virtual classroom software to the Moodle platform. The company released a piece of software Tuesday called Elluminate Bridge for Moodle, which is designed to integrate Live! into the open-source learning management system.
(2/12/2008)
Unwanted Attention More Common in Chat Rooms and IM than Social Networking Sites
A study just published in the journal Pediatrics reports that young people are more likely to be exposed to unwanted solicitations in instant messaging (IM) and chat rooms than through social networking sites.
(2/11/2008)
RM Rolls Out Classroom Science Gear, New Whiteboard Software
RM Educational Software has released four new educational devices in its TTS ("Teaching Technology Skills") line of classroom science gear, including a camera with scope adapter and robots designed for K-6 students. The company has also released version 3.4 of its RM Easiteach classroom software.
(2/11/2008)
Karl Fisch: Creating Lifelong Learners
Many technology pioneers come from, well, technology backgrounds. Not Karl Fisch, a former math teacher whose role over time evolved into the director of technology at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, CO. Starting with three years of teaching middle school math in the early 1990s, Fisch noticed technology "inching its way" into the school administration and classrooms after years of seeing all recordkeeping handled at each institution's central office.
(2/7/2008)
Internet Traffic Control Software Enhanced
Lightspeed Systems, a company that makes security programs for the educational market, announced a new release of Total Traffic Control, which controls access to the Internet. The application's core functionality includes content filtering, spam management, bandwidth management, reporting, anti-virus, message journaling, and layered security.
(2/7/2008)
eChalk, Thinkronize Partner for Online Learning
At the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA) conference in Austin this week, education technology developer Thrinkronize announced several new initiatives, including an education partnership with eChalk and integration with Lightspeed Systems' Total Traffic Control security system.
(2/7/2008)
Palm Beach County Gets Its Game On
The School District of Palm Beach County is giving educational gaming a shot. Three of the district's middle schools will be deploying Tabula Digita's DimensionM in an effort to to make complex mathematical concepts fun to learn for students.
(2/6/2008)
Blog Editor Adds Tagging Support
Red Sweater Software has released an update to MarsEdit, a blog editing tool for Mac OS X. The new 2.1.1 release, posted Monday, includes several enhancements to tagging posts, previewing content, and managing blog entry drafts.
(2/6/2008)
JumpBox Brings PmWiki to Virtual Environments
JumpBox this week released JumpBox for PmWiki, a bundled software tool that combines support for virtual computing environments with open-source wiki functionality.
(2/6/2008)
Accessible eLearning: School for Deaf Deploys D2L
Washington School for the Deaf in Vancouver, WA is making the move to provide educational services to deaf and hard of hearing students regardless of location. The statewide educational agency has adopted the Desire2Learn learning management system in an effort to provide direct instruction to students from around the state.
(2/6/2008)
Rapid Intake Rolls Out eLearning Development Platform
Rapid Intake, an eLearning solution provider, has launched a new-Web-based platform for collaborative development of eLearning projects. The new tool, Unison, debuted Monday at the Training 2008 Conference & Expo.
(2/5/2008)
Blackboard Academic Suite 8 Integrates Plagiarism Prevention
Blackboard has released version 8 of the Blackboard Academic Suite 8. The latest release of the learning management system for academic institutions adds a variety of enhancements driven in large part by feedback from the user community, including improvements for administrators and IT, student self- and peer assessments, improved grading features, and the integration of Blackboard's SafeAssign, a plagiarism detection and prevention service.
(2/5/2008)
Which Technologies Will Shape Education in 2008?
Mobile broadband, collaborative Web technologies, and mashups will all significantly impact education over the next five years, along with "grassroots" video, collective intelligence, and "social operating systems." This according to a new report released last week by the New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative, the 2008 Horizon Report.
(2/4/2008)
HP, Microsoft Debut 'Teacher Experience Exchange'
HP and Microsoft are launching a new online center targeted specifically toward K-12 teachers in schools that have standardized on the Windows platform. Dubbed the "Teacher Experience Exchange," the service is designed to provide forums for discussion and sharing, as well as content for helping teachers prepare for using technology in instruction.
(2/1/2008)
WSO2 Unveils Open Source Mashup Server
WSO2 is offering a new open source mashup server and has rolled out a beta of a new hosted mashup service. Both fall under Apache open source licensing and the WSO2 Mashup Server 1.0 represents "the first open source [server] solution for mashups," according to Jonathan Marsh, WSO2's director of mashups.
(1/31/2008)
Designing Students' Futures on the Web
With a classroom of eager-but-apprehensive students sitting in front of her, Debby Martin threw out some ideas that the advanced Web page design students could tackle as a team. Soon the class discussion turned to the fact that teenagers often get a bad rap from their communities, which don't always "get" what they're doing or why they're doing it. "Some of them even mess up and negatively affect the entire community," said Martin, a business teacher at Hampton City Schools in Hampton, VA, which encompasses four high schools.
(1/31/2008)
