THE Journal — eLearning/Web

The Great Debate: Effectiveness of Technology in Education

I sometimes wonder why there is debate on the effectiveness of technology in education. The whole point of a debate is to examine issues in such a way that decisions can be made. However, in this case, we can hardly say, "Remove all technology from education!" Or, "Don't add any more because we are not getting an adequate return on our current investment--technology is not improving the quality of education." What would we put in its place?
(11/8/2007)

NC District Literacy Intervention Program Applies Neuroscience

North Carolina's Anson County School District has deployed Scientific Learning's Fast ForWord To Reading Series reading intervention software as part of its program to increase literacy among students who are at risk readers.
(11/8/2007)

AdLit.org Debuts To Help Struggling Adolescents Read, Write

A new site called AdLit.org has come online to help parents and educators help adolescent students in grades 4 to 12 who are having literacy difficulties improve their reading and writing skills.
(11/8/2007)

Innovation First Brings Robotics to the Classroom

With robotics playing an ever more integral role in STEM education, Innovation First, the company behind a wide range of robotics initiatives, has launched a new online resource targeted directly toward K-12 and post-secondary education.
(11/8/2007)

Interwrite Donates Pads for UNESCO Project

As part of a project launched by UNESCO Bangkok and Microsoft, called Next Generation of Teachers, Interwrite Learning this week donated 30 Interwrite Pads to support distance learning for teacher professional education. The donations were distributed through local reseller to a variety of countries participating in the project, including China, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.
(11/8/2007)

Indiana Virtual Academy Adopts Angel LMS

Indiana Virtual Academy has made the move to the Angel Learning Management System from Angel Learning. Indiana Virtual was originally conceived as a means of providing postsecondary educational opportunities to rural students in Indiana but now serves students across the state, including high school and middle school students seeking advanced courses and accelerated education, homebound students, students looking to make up credits, and continuing education students.
(11/5/2007)

Institute Focuses on K-12 Laptop/Tablet Adoption

The Lausanne Collegiate School has teamed up with the Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation to produce next year's Laptop Institute, an academic conference focusing on the adoption of laptop and tablet-based computers in K-12 education. It's designed as a sort of "think tank" for schools looking to adopt laptops and tablets as learning tools.
(11/5/2007)

Blended Program Supports Preschool Literacy

Teachscape has launched three new professional development series for pre-kindergarten educators and mentors, combining face to face and online learning programs that incorporate access to training content, reporting, and work management applications using Teachscape's Online Program Manager. The programs focus on developing skills for educators teaching literacy skills to preschoolers and fostering environments that promote language learning for principals, mentors, and other education supporters.
(11/5/2007)

Mobile Educational Gaming To Triple by 2012

The market for mobile educational gaming will more than triple by 2012, according to a new forecast released late last week by research firm Ambient Insight. Demand for mobile educational gaming will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 26.5 percent over the next five years, with annual revenues expected to hit $185 million by 2012, up from the current $57 million.
(11/5/2007)

21st Century Learning: 'We're Not Even Close'

Without incorporating technology into every aspect of its activities, no organization can expect to achieve results in this increasingly digital world. Yet education is dead last in technology use compared with all major industrial sectors, and that has to change in order for schools to meet the challenges of 21st century learning--this according to a paper released Monday by the State Education Technology Directors Association (SETDA), the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills at the SETDA Leadership Summit and Education Forum in Washington, DC.
(11/5/2007)

Case Study: Writing with Technology

Practicing writing is typically a slow process. It's time-consuming, and student feedback is often delayed owing to the time it takes teachers to grade each essay for grammar, content, and writing style. In a world of 24/7 advertising, Game Boys and instant messaging, how can teachers motivate middle and high school students to invest their time and energy and actually enjoy practicing writing?
(11/5/2007)

Getting Started with Videogame Development

In the first segment in this series, we covered the pedagogy behind student videogame development.  We addressed how learning as doing, collaborative & peer learning, tutoring, ownership, and publication are critical components to game development.  We also addressed benefits of videogame making, including content area knowledge acquisition, students as producers of information, and the potential of game-making for encouraging STEM-related careers for women and minorities. 
(11/1/2007)

Beaufort County SD Revamps Network for E-Learning

Beaufort County School District is South Carolina is overhauling its network infrastructure to facilitate e-learning applications and to help provide advanced online professional development through the use of streaming video. The district is working with technology provider Extreme Networks and systems integrator Converged Networks on the overhaul.
(11/1/2007)

Districts Revamp Curricula for 21st Century Learning

School districts around the United States are taking an active approach to 21st century learning by retooling their curricula and changing the way they measure student achievement in STEM subjects. What's more, according to a survey released this month by the National School Boards Association, technology is playing a major role in facilitating change, from online learning to project-based learning to Web 2.0 applications like wikis and blogs.
(10/31/2007)

Angel To Supply Learning Management for Harcourt Programs

Angel Learning and Harcourt Education have formed an alliance for e-learning. Through the arrangement, Angel will provide learning management technologies for use with educational programs from Harcourt School Publishers and Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
(10/31/2007)

Live! Integration Coming to Sakai Open-Source LMS

Education technology developer Elluminate is bringing its Live! collaboration suite to the Sakai Collaboration and Learning Environment, an open-source learning management system. The move is part of a new alliance with Unicon, a company that specializes in providing support and services for open-source software to education.
(10/30/2007)

Web 2.0 Entails 'Sleeping Giant' Security Risk

As increasing numbers of enterprises climb aboard the Web 2.0 bandwagon, it's more important than ever for software developers keep security in mind during the development process. So says Danny Allan, director of security research at Watchfire, the Waltham, Mass.-based Web-app security company acquired by IBM in July. Allan was in Santa Clara, Calif. to speak at this year's AjaxWorld show, and he took a few minutes to talk with me before his presentation.
(10/30/2007)

FoF Sets History in Motion

Educational content provider Facts on File has once again expanded the range of multimedia materials on its reference sites, adding new videos to its history databases, including African-American History Online, American History Online, American Women's History Online, and Modern World History Online.
(10/29/2007)

Adobe To Release Flex Builder 2 Free for Education Users

Adobe last week announced its intention to release Flex Builder 2 free for students and faculty at education institutions. Flex Builder, which retails for $499, is an integrated development environment for the Flex framework, which powers cross-platform rich Internet applications on the Web.
(10/29/2007)

Can Game Development Impact Academic Achievement?

Electronic gaming has recently been hailed as the great new potential for transforming education. A growing body of research and practice suggests videogames can motivate as well as teach and help users learn. Fewer scientific studies, but just as much potential, exist within the area of student game development. In part 1 of this two-part article series, we look at the foundational reasons for why game development matters in the K-12 curriculum, both inside and outside of school.
(10/25/2007)

Apple Launches iPhone Dev Center

Apple has created a new suite of development resources tailored specifically for the iPhone. Dubbed the "iPhone Dev Center," the service provides a range of resources, including guidelines for optimizing Web apps for the iPhone, sample code, video tutorials, and other reference material.
(10/25/2007)

Wireless Gen Brings DIBELS to Harcourt Reading

Harcourt School Publishers and Wireless Generation have formed a partnership to bring assessment to Harcourt's StoryTown and Trophies curricula. Through the partnership, the two will develop mCLASS:DIBELS StoryTown Edition and mCLASS:DIBELS Trophies Edition, which will use Wireless Generation's mCLASS:DIBELS assessment and reporting/analysis system to deliver formative assessments to the classroom reading instruction tools.
(10/25/2007)

Study: Students Want To Learn Online

Online learning appears to be playing a more and more vital role in the lives of students. In a study released last week by Project Tomorrow and Blackboard, a large percentage of middle and high school students expressed an interest in taking courses online that aren't offered at their schools.
(10/25/2007)

USGBC Launches Green Schools Resource Site

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has launched a new site for schools going green and for those looking to promote green initiatives on their campuses. The new site, Build Green Schools, is designed for a wide range of users, providing resources for students, parents, teachers, and school administrators alike.
(10/23/2007)

PBS Boosts Peer Connection Resources

PBS TeacherLine has expanded its professional development support tools through Peer Connection, a portal tailored for instructional coaches--those who develop and deliver professional development for their peers. It now includes expanded resources in core subjects and instructional technology.
(10/23/2007)