THE Journal — eLearning/Web
HotChalk Partnerships Expand Digital Resources For Teachers, Students
HotChalk, an online education resource for teachers, parents, and students, announced partnerships with McGraw-Hill, National Geographic, and PBS. The partnerships will provide HotChalk with curriculum content and video resources from the companies, augmenting the collaborative learning environment currently used by more than 395,000 teachers worldwide.
(6/5/2008)
Missouri Approves Electronic Transcripts for A+ Schools
The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education this week approved the use of the Connect! platform from ConnectEDU to deliver electronic transcripts to colleges from its A+ designated schools. There are more than 250 A+ designated schools in Missouri.
(6/5/2008)
SAS Brings Online High School Curriculum Tool to Homeschoolers
Ed tech provider SAS inSchool, a unit of SAS, is bringing its online curriculum tool, Curriculum Pathways, to homeschoolers. The company this week announced that it would make the technology available for home users for a $99 annual licensing fee.
(6/5/2008)
Threats to Office Multiply with New Offerings from Adobe, IBM
Paying for word processing software may soon be a thing of past if Microsoft competitors Adobe, Google, and IBM have any say.
(6/4/2008)
Metro Nashville Public Schools Adopts Alternative High School Program
Metro Nashville Public Schools in Tennessee this week announced that it's adopting an alternative high school program. The district voted to contract with Educational Services of America for its technology-assisted educational program, Ombudsman, as part of its goal of reaching 100 percent graduation by 2014.
(6/4/2008)
Phoenix Mars Mission Comes to Students via iTunes U
The University of Arizona has brought video and animation relating to the Phoenix Mars Mission onto iTunes U, the education-focused portal hosted on Apple's iTunes. U Arizona is the lead on the mission, the first in a NASA program aimed at launching smaller missions to Mars designed to complement larger ones. The university is also offering a wide range of educational content targeted toward K-12 schools on its Web site.
(6/3/2008)
iQ Academy Launches Virtual School in Minnesota
iQ Academy Minnesota announced the launch of a new online school for Minnesota students, grades 6 through 12. Now enrolling for the 2008-2009 school year, the program provides tuition-free education, small-group instruction, and one-on-one teacher interaction in a virtual classroom environment.
(6/2/2008)
Adobe Intros Acrobat 9, Launches Acrobat.com Beta
Adobe Monday announced details of its forthcoming major revision to the entire Acrobat family: Acrobat 9. The company also debuted a new Acrobat.com collaboration beta site and announced an updated Creative Suite (version 3.3), which will incorporate the upcoming Acrobat 9 Pro software.
(6/2/2008)
Students Get Web-based Planning and Time Management Service
Studiolo Systems has gone into beta testing with StudyRails.com, a Web application intended to help students improve their academic performance by optimizing their study habits. StudyRails provides step-by-step, personalized study plans, e-mail and cell phone study reminders and the blocking of social networking Web sites, software and games during study time.
(5/30/2008)
OLPC To Roll Out Laptops to Colombia
According to information released by the non-profit group One Laptop per Child, Caldas, a state in Colombia, has ordered 65,000 XO laptops in an effort to get laptops in the hands of school-aged children.
(5/30/2008)
Struggling Readers Perk Up under New Program
"These students just blossomed.... We saw their self-esteem go through the roof." That's Trena Nave, a reading specialist at Carbondale Middle School in Illinois, talking about a group of 12 seventh-graders in self-contained special education who last year benefited from a new, partly computer-based reading program.
(5/29/2008)
DyKnow Software Suite Expands Active Directory, Blackboard Integration
Interactive classroom technology provider DyKnow this week released an update to its DyKnow Software Suite. The new release, version 5.1, includes updates to both components of the suite, DyKnow Vision and DyKnow Monitor, along with general administrative enhancements.
(5/29/2008)
Washington District Ramps Up High-Speed Access
In an effort to bolster its technology infrastructure for teaching and learning, Highline Public Schools in Burien, WA is rolling out high-speed services in 35 locations. The new network services, which include Qwest GeoMax and Qwest Metro Optical Ethernet, are being funded through E-Rate.
(5/28/2008)
Smart To Update Classroom Response System in July
Education technology developer Smart Technologies this week announced a new version of its Senteo interactive response system, Senteo 2.0. The free upgrade is expected to be available in July.
(5/28/2008)
Blackboard Defends Patent, Files More Claims
Blackboard this week defended its e-learning patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The USPTO in March rejected all of the claims in Blackboard's patent following a reexamination prompted by requests from open source advocate the Software Freedom Law Center and commercial rival Desire2Learn. But the patent rejection was not final, allowing Blackboard a window of time to respond to the decision.
(5/28/2008)
Moodle 1.9.1 Gets Performance Improvements, Minor Fixes
Moodle has released Moodle 1.9.1, the first maintenance update to the popular open-source learning management system since the 1.9 launch in March. The new version includes a number of minor fixes, as well as performance improvements and some new functionality.
(5/27/2008)
Angel LMS To Integrate with Classroom Response System
Angel Learning has teamed up with eInstruction to integrate the Classroom Performance System into Angel's learning management system. The integration will bring real-time gradebook input to Angel LMS, including attendance, assessments, and grade posting.
(5/27/2008)
Live@edu Integrates Exchange Labs
Microsoft's Live@edu, a suite of online tools focused specifically toward education, has now been expanded to include Exchange Labs, which is similar to a hosted Exchange service but with prototype features that are not yet available to the general public. The move brings expanded e-mail options to campus IT departments, including 10 GB of space per account, as free added features.
(5/27/2008)
Office Live Workspace Beta Released Internationally
Microsoft this week released an international beta of its Office Live Workspace (OLW) suite of productivity tools. The company also quietly launched an Office Live Update last week that takes on performance issues and brings in some additional functionality when working with Office 2007, XP, and 2003.
(5/23/2008)
Unified Communications System in Tulsa Powers Virtual Classroom
Tulsa Technology Center, a school district with four campuses that offers career and technology education classes in Oklahoma, will be deploying a Nortel and Microsoft unified communications platform. The district will be using Xeta Technologies, a national provider of converged voice and data communications solutions. The platform is expected to enhance student-teacher communication while reducing school expenses.
(5/21/2008)
Adobe Launches Bundles for Online Learning
Adobe this week launched a new slate of bundles and resources for educators looking to use Acrobat Connect Pro in their online teaching efforts. Adobe just introduced the new version of Acrobat Connect Pro about two weeks ago.
(5/21/2008)
Social Networking: Learning Theory in Action
There has been a lot of recent debate on the benefits of social networking tools and software in education. While there are good points on either side of the debate, there remains the essential difference in theoretical positioning. Most conventional educational environments are "Objectivist" in nature and highly structured in terms of students progress and choice. Social networking essentially requires a less controlled, user-generated environment which challenges conventional views of the effective "management" of teaching and learning. Therefore, can social networking both as an instructional concept and user skill be integrated into the conventional approaches to teaching and learning? Do the skills developed within a social networking environment have value in the more conventional environments of learning?
(5/21/2008)
21st Century Learning: Making Technology Relevant in Today's Classrooms
"21st Century Learning" is currently the hottest catchphrase in education, but what it means has yet to be fully determined. Technology is a part of students' everyday lives, and substantial advances in technology have profoundly affected the way they learn. As a result, educators are working hard to meet the ever-evolving needs of 21st century learners. Translating the ongoing technological revolution into a learning experience is a fundamental part of that challenge.
(5/21/2008)
SightSpeed Releases Free MySpace Widget for Video Mail and Chat
SightSpeed has launched SightSpeed Light on MySpace, a free widget that adds integrated video mail, public video posting, and video chat for members of MySpace. The widget was built using MySpace's Developer Platform, introduced in February.
(5/20/2008)
Louisiana and British Kids Share 'Virtual Sleepover'
Students from a British school were joined for part of their annual reading sleepover by students from two schools in Louisiana. Organized by Renaissance Learning, which publishes Accelerated Reader, the schools were linked together live by video conference.
(5/20/2008)
