Blackboard, a company that designs an education software for school groups, has acquired mobile messaging provider Saf-T-Net for $33 million. Saf-T-Net develops AlertNow, which is a mobile messaging technology aimed to the K-12 marketplace.
AlertNow’s technology delivers voice, e-mail and emergency SMS messages at a rate up to 2.5 million per hour to parents, students and school administrators.
(Link: Blackboard Buys Mobile Messaging Company Saf-T-Net For $33 Million)
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e-learning, k12
The potential for adaptive learning technology goes beyond SAT and grad school test prep, and could easily be applied to teaching English grammar, math, and a host of core skill sets in other educational settings. CEO Jose Ferreira says the company is keeping those possibilities on the back burner. “We’ll definitely add other test prep products as well as other direct to consumer offerings. Those may include the after school tutoring or home schooling markets,” Ferreira said over email, “and, yes, we may go after prep for K12 tests but no plans to anytime soon. And we definitely plan to license our platform to other educational groups, especially textbook publishers and schools themselves.”
(Link: Knewton launches adaptive-learning SAT Prep Course)
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e-learning, testprep
The Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot Potatoes is freeware, and you may use it for any purpose or project you like. It is not open-source.
(Link: Hot Potatoes – create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises)
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authoringtools, e-learning
At this time, the greatest single resource available to Moodle users, Moodle.org, and the Moodle partners at Moodle.com, is the content which has been accumulated within each classroom’s walls. These digital blueprints to learning are the key to turning millions more onto the benefits of Moodle. But the number of courses that are available to view, peruse, download and/or reuse is far fewer than the number of courses that have been completed. By my estimate, nearly 100%3 of course materials created in Moodle are still closed to the public.
(Link: Moodle: open source, closed doors. | opensource.com)
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e-learning, moodle, tweet
identifies 13 distinct iGeneration traits, including:
•Early introduction to technology.
•Adeptness at multitasking.
•Desire for immediacy.
•Ability to use technology to create a vast array of “content.”
(Link: Tech-savvy ‘iGeneration’ kids multi-task, connect – USATODAY.com)
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e-learning, igeneration
In a kind of Wikipedia of textbooks, Macmillan, one of the five largest publishers of trade books and textbooks, is introducing software called DynamicBooks, which will allow college instructors to edit digital editions of textbooks and customize them for their individual classes.
(Link: Macmillan’s DynamicBooks Lets Professors Rewrite E-Textbooks – NYTimes.com)
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e-learning, textbooks
AICC accomplishes cross domain course content in the following manner:
* The student launches the lesson and the filename in the AU file is a URL to its content server on the internet.
* In the launch to the URL, call-back information is sent to the remote (content) server, so that it knows which (LMS) server it needs to communicate with.
* The remote content server attempts to establish communication with the LMS server that launched the lesson.
* Once communication is confirmed, the content is displayed through the LMS, from the remote location to the student’s web browser.
(Link: AICC and the LMS)
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aicc, e-learning
blendedschools.net is a non-profit organization that provides a complete package of curriculum, technology, professional development and a collaborative network to its member districts.
(Link: blendedschools.net – Custom Solutions Through Blended Learning)
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e-learning
Open, Transferable and Technology-enabled Educational Resources
The OTTER project enables the production and release of high-quality open educational resources (OERs) drawn from teaching materials delivered at the University of Leicester.
(Link: OTTER — University of Leicester)
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e-learning, OER, opencontent
Q4. What are the learning outcomes and results from your project so far?
We have not attempted to measure learning. Our index includes over 110,000 OERs including over 3,500 OpenCourseWares and OERs in 8 languages. Over 1400 users have registered in the past 5 months. We recently added functionality to allow users to register feeds they produce such as their bookmarks and blogs, and to share and comment on OERs in the system. We have conducted research on algorithms for personalized recommendations.
(Link: Folksemantic)
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e-learning, lms, opencontent
Eqiat SUMMARY An easy QTI item authoring tool. It is web based and aims to make simple question types easy to author.
(Link: EQIAT – An easy QTI item authoring tool)
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authoringtools, e-learning, qti
learn eXact includes a very powerful templating technology supporting 3 modes for Template creation:
* WYSIWYG editor allows creation Templates in a visual layout mode. The editor can be extended with proprietary graphics and interaction objects libraries beyond the set of functionality provided in the standard package
* Learning Object Models technology allows XML data structure definition and rendering engine development through any mark-up/scripting language or other multimedia format (such as XSL, Flash and JS)
* Advanced LO Model Editors can be embedded into Learning Object models, adding to the standard templates easy to use and client defined Graphical User Interfaces to guide step by step input from Authors
(Link: Giunti Labs | Learning Content Management Solutions and Services (LCMS) LO Templates)
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authoring, e-learning
The data suggest they needn’t worry. Opening the courses “provided neither a large positive marketing effect that boosted enrollments nor a large negative free-rider impact decreasing enrollments,” wrote Justin K. Johansen, who conducted the study as a dissertation in instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young, where he also serves as director of independent study.
“Really, the OpenCourseWare ended up serving as an advertising tool,” Mr. Johansen said in an interview. Over all, the six opened courses attracted 13,795 visits and 445 paid enrollments in four months. But Mr. Johansen cautions that the limited length of the pilot study meant that a “statistically significant” measure of the impact of opening the classes on paid enrollment “was not possible.”
(Link: Free Online Courses Don’t Hurt Paid Enrollment – The Chronicle of Higher Education)
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e-learning, freemium, tweet
Time To Know’s breakthrough solution, created for one-to-one computing classrooms, includes an interactive core curriculum aligned to your state’s standards and a powerful digital teaching platform with robust teaching and learning tools.
Time to Know’s proven solution empowers students toward greater achievement and deeper learning.
(Link: Homepage – TimeToKnow)
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e-learning
The challenge is daunting not only because of the sheer amount of content that requires to be designed and produced, but also because the curriculum has to fulfill alignment to state and country standards. This means that curriculum which received approval in Texas will require tweaking for approval in New York. This explains why Time To Know employees a team of 350 consisting of 120 pedagogy and instructional designers (aka teachers), 60 graphics artists, illustrators and animators and 80 technologists.
(Link: Israel’s Time To Know Aims To Revolutionize The Classroom)
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e-learning, kids, lms
