eLearning/CMS
- IBM Debuts Web 2.0, Collaborative Technologies
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1/29/2008
IBM has unveiled several new collaboration tools and Web 2.0 technologies, including IBM Lotus Mashups, a forthcoming commercial mashup maker designed to allow "non-technical users to easily create enterprise mashups." At the Lotusphere conference in Florida last Wednesday, the company also introduced new versions of Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr, a rich collaboration tool.
- Newfoundland Adopts Sweeping LMS Change in All Public Education
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1/24/2008
The province of Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada has announced a new initiative that will impact all public education within its borders, from kindergarten to higher ed. It's adopted a single LMS solution for al of its schools, colleges, and universities--the Desire2Learn Learning Environment--in an effort to unify and enhance collaborative learning.
- S.A.T. Prep in Second Life: It's Social Once Again
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1/23/2008
The Princeton Review already has its SAT LiveOnline courses, and Ohio University already has an island and an expert Second Life (SL) developer. Together, they are offering a series of SAT strategy sessions in a Second Life site within the Ohio University island at Second Life.
- Smart Adds Leopard Support to Whiteboard Software
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1/21/2008
Smart Technologies has released an update to its whiteboard software, Smart Board 9.7. The update comes on the heels of a full-version upgrade for the company's Notebook software, announced last week at the Macworld expo in San Francisco. Smart Board software powers Smart's line of interactive whiteboards (Smart Boards), its Sympodium interactive pen display, and its AirLiner wireless slate.
- Temple U Moves to Unified Digital Campus
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1/21/2008
Temple University in Pennsylvania announced recently that it's shifting its campus systems over to SunGard Higher Education's "Unified Digital Campus." The move is part of an initiative to improve and unify campus services, including administrative functions, learning communities, and other technologies.
- Podcasting and Education
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1/16/2008
Is podcasting spreading like wildfire across campuses, or does it just seem like it? Can good podcasts on your school's site boost enrollment? How can educators get started in podcasting on a budget? What's the first rule to follow in considering whether or not to create a podcast?
- New Free Platform Aims To Ease Sharing of Digital Collections
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1/15/2008
A new Web platform for publishing collections and exhibitions online got a nod of fame last week when it was referenced in The Washington Times profile of George Mason University's Center for History and New Media, which the paper called "at the forefront of the new wave of collecting history." The free, open-source platform is named Omeka, a Swahili word meaning "to display or lay out goods or wares; to speak out; to spread out; to unpack."
- Blackboard To Buy Out NTI
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1/14/2008
CMS/LMS developer Blackboard announced this week its intent to acquire NTI Group. NTI is a provider of mass notification and emergency alert systems used in higher education and K-12. Both companies have already approved the acquisition, and the deal is expected to close this quarter, pending regulatory approval.
- Creating Life-Size Molecules in Second Life
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1/9/2008
The debate continues over just how useful virtual worlds like Second Life are for educational purposes. We spoke with Drexel University's Jean-Claude Bradley, who is e-learning coordinator for the College of Arts and Sciences, and an associate professor of chemistry. Despite his initial skepticism, in 2007 Bradley helped establish Drexel's presence in Second Life, Drexel Island, and used Second Life last semester to augment portions of his Introduction to Organic Chemistry course. He has blogged extensively about his use of the medium. Here, he discusses the benefits--and drawbacks--of the much-discussed virtual world.
- De-coupling Course Content Management from the LMS/CMS
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1/9/2008
Sandy Schaeffer makes a call for higher education technology decision-makers to put pressure on the LMS vendor community to begin to un-bundle their products... with particular emphasis on greater flexibility in terms of content management.
- Smart Debuts Notebook 10; New Whiteboards Also Launched
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1/9/2008
Smart Technologies this week debuted a new full-version update of its Notebook collaborative learning software and also launched new interactive whiteboard systems. The new Notebook 10, which will make its first public appearance at the Macworld Conference and Expo next week in San Francisco, adds 30 new features for lesson creation and delivery.
- U Illinois Adopts D2L for Global Campus Initiative
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1/8/2008
The University of Illinois is powering its latest online initiative using Desire2Learn's electronic learning solutions, including the Enterprise eLearning Suite and the D2L Learning Environment. The initiative, called the University of Illinois Global Campus, is aimed at expanding the university system's reach to provide affordable and accessible education to students in Illinois and around the world.
- Software Aids Collaborative Teaching and Learning at U Georgia
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12/12/2007
Active, collaborative learning is a laudable goal in the classroom, but with individual students at computers throughout the room, it's not always easy to achieve.
- Oklahoma Consortium Adopts D2L for Higher Ed
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12/4/2007
The Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education has adopted Desire2Learn as the learning management system for the Oklahoma Higher Education Consortium, a public higher education consortium that focuses on the selection and deployment of technologies to be used in Oklahoma's colleges and universities.
- Aurora U Reaches Out to K-12 with HOSTS Mentoring
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12/3/2007
Aurora University in Illinois has teamed up with HOSTS Learning to provide intervention programs to local middle school students through the HOSTS Mentoring and Intervention solution. Launched in October, the program will run through May 2008 out of Aurora's Institute for Collaboration resource center.
- 2007 U.S. Electronic Learning Market Tops $13 Billion
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11/30/2007
In the United States, the demand for self-paced electronic learning products will hit $13.6 billion by the end of 2007 and will continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.01 percent over the next five years. This according to a new forecast from Ambient Insight detailed in report released this week entitled, "The U.S. Market for Self-paced eLearning Products and Services: 2007-2012 Forecast and Analysis."
- MIT Extends OpenCourseWare to High Schools
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11/29/2007
Five years after the initial pilot of MIT's OpenCourseWare initiative, it's now making its way into secondary education with the launch this week of "Highlights for High School," which aims to bolster high school STEM education through free and open course materials, from complete curricula and syllabi to videos, lecture notes, and animations.
- Blackboard Backpack Adds SCORM Support
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11/28/2007
Agilix Labs this week released Blackboard Backpack 3.1, an update to the company's mobility solution for the Blackboard Learning System. The new update adds support for the 2004 Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM), including support for viewing SCORM content offline.
- Snapshot: Academic Services Spending To Reach $1.2 Billion
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11/26/2007
Composed of professional services such as those supporting online education and faculty recruitment that help institutions support teaching and learning objectives, the academic services market is serving key postsecondary priorities.
- Continuing Education Sites Lacking, Researchers Say
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11/20/2007
Continuing and professional education (CPE) sites are somewhat effective at helping students with their enrollment decisions, but they're lacking in some key functionality areas: content, search capabilities, and multimedia. In the second of its three-part series of research reports, "Optimizing School Web Sites as a Marketing and Recruitment Tool," education consultancy Eduventures found that prospective continuing education students in large part think these sites come up short in areas they consider crucial and made specific recommendations for the types of content that should be added to these sites to boost their effectiveness.
- IBM/University Collaboration To Develop Open-Source Accessibility Tools
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11/20/2007
University researchers in the United States and the U.K. have started collaborating with IBM to develop open-source software solutions aimed at bringing accessibility to older workers to "help them adapt to and remain productive in the changing workplace of the 21st century," according to information released late last week by IBM. The effort is part of IBM's Open Collaborative Research initiative, which creates partnerships with universities for the purpose of developing and releasing open-source tools to the public.
- Baltimore County College Takes Health Care Programs Online
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11/15/2007
The Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) is expanding its e-learning activities by developing online and hybrid programs in health care. The move will help alleviate what the college described as a "backlog of potential students who previously were prevented from enrolling due to limited classroom space." The initiative includes new online nursing, paramedic, and medical lab technician programs.
- MIT Researchers Advance Lecture Capture with Search Capabilities
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11/14/2007
Researchers in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a new Web-based technology that's designed to take recorded classroom lectures to the next level. The technology, developed by a team led by MIT's Regina Barzilay and James Glass, provides search functionality for classroom video recordings. At present, the prototype only works with MIT's online lectures made available to the public through the university's OpenCourseWare initiative, but it may be made available to other institutions in the future.
- The Potato Made Me Do It
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11/14/2007
A leading open source proponent explains why he says the characteristics institutions reward will be "replicated in the DNA of software companies."
- Stanford Offers Advanced Security Certification Online
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11/9/2007
Stanford University this fall began to offer its advanced computer security certificate program completely online in an effort to improve access to the program.
