THE Journal — eLearning/Web
Second Life: Do You Need One? (Part 4)
In this final installment of our four-part series on Second Life, Amareal Jewell continues her conversation with Virtual Bacon, an experienced Second Lifer who is the owner and creator of imagiLEARNING island and who works to introduce traditional educators and businesspeople to SL. Here he explains the top-seven hurdles faced by traditional educators as they attempt to grasp some decidedly non-traditional concepts in virtual learning. He also discusses other, general issues with Second Life in education and entertainment.
(7/19/2007)
Pearson Debuts Interactive NovaNET Geometry
Pearson has launched a new online geometry course for its NovaNET 15.0 service targeted toward students in grades 6 through 12 and adult education.
(7/19/2007)
Hawaii DOE Consolidates Professional Development Statewide
The Hawaii Department of Education (HDOE) is streamlining its professional development operations for educators with the creation of the statewide PDE3 eLearning and Professional Development Portal. The portal is a collaboration between HDOE's Office of Human Resources and Office of Information Technology Services. Education technology provider TrueNorthLogic has been contracted to help develop the portal.
(7/18/2007)
Harcourt Releases Learnia Advanced for Texas
Harcourt Assessment, the testing unit of publisher Harcourt Education, has released Learnia Advanced, Texas Edition. Learnia Advanced is a formative assessment suite for K-12 students.
(7/16/2007)
'Number Worlds' Expanded to Middle Schoolers
Education publisher SRA/McGraw-Hill has expanded its Number Worlds program to include middle school math. Number Worlds is an intervention program designed to help students catch up with their peers in math. It was previously available only for preK-6 students.
(7/16/2007)
Second Life: Do You Need One? (Part 3)
Second Life (SL) is a massive 3D virtual world that a growing number of colleges and universities is exploring for its educational possibilities. In the first two parts of this series, I introduced some resources to help you learn about SL, join, and get the basics about navigation and communication. I alerted you to some frustrations that you might experience getting your feet wet. I discussed learning opportunities, mentioned some ongoing initiatives, and raised some concerns for using virtual worlds in education. My discussion has been based on the "newbie" perspective through the adventures of Amareal Jewell, the inworld avatar that I created when I joined SL.
(7/12/2007)
Kaplan Selling SAT Prep on iTunes
Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, a division of Kaplan (New York), has put three interactive SAT prep programs on Apple's iTunes service.
(7/12/2007)
Rye Neck District Brings Interwrite to All Classrooms
Rye Neck Union Free School District in New York has standardized on Interwrite Learning's technologies for all of its K-12 classrooms. The implementation includes Interwrite Board interactive whiteboards and Interwrite Pad Bluetooth wireless pads in all classrooms, including special education classes.
(7/12/2007)
Boston School Rolls Out Senior Projects with Free e-Portfolio Tool
Boston Community Leadership Academy (BCLA), a pilot college prep school in Massachusetts, last month began using a free e-portfolio tool to help its senior class present capstone projects in community studies. The projects were part of a final assessment for graduation, requiring students to conduct research in their communities, collect data, and defend their portfolios. This was the first year the school used electronic portfolios for the capstone projects, and, in doing so, the school also became the 1,000th to use the e-portfolio solution from Digication.
(7/11/2007)
Turning To Release 4th-Generation Response System
Turning Technologies will release a new version of its student response system, TurningPoint. The new version, TurningPoint 2008, along with the company's new ResponseCard XR keypad, will begin shipping later this summer.
(7/10/2007)
SciTalks.com Offers Lecture Video Search Site
In the same vein as YouTube, SciTalks.com (Boston, MA) has launched a searchable online collection of science lecture video files from across the world. Currently 1,000 lectures are online, with new videos being added daily.
(7/10/2007)
Promethean To Ship Student Response Tool
Education technology developer Promethean said it will ship a new component to its Activclassroom suite in December 2007: Activexpression. Activclassroom is a suite of tools for classroom learning that includes instructional tools, assessment solutions, and various other resources for teachers and students.
(7/10/2007)
Second Life: Do You Need One? (Part 2)
Second Life is a 3D digital world, imagined, created, and owned by its residents, which number more than 7 million from over 100 countries at the time of this writing. It has generated excitement for entertainment, business, and education. And the number of colleges and universities, libraries, museums, and organizations exploring its possibilities is growing. In part 1 of this three-part series, I introduced some resources to help you learn about SL, join, and get the basics about navigation and communication. I also alerted you to some frustrations that you might experience getting your feet wet. Hmm ... did it happen to you when you stopped flying?
(7/5/2007)
Video Game Tournament Tests Middle Schoolers' Math Skills
Pac Man's okay, but can he solve for "x?" Riverwatch Middle School (Suwanee, GA) eighth grader John Pickering won the June 26 National Multiplayer Educational Game Tournament, the first competition of its kind, which was held at the 2007 National Educational Computer Conference in Atlanta. The inaugural tournament used three-dimensional video games to test the algebra skills of middle schoolers from across the country.
(7/5/2007)
Tabula Launches Multiplayer Algebra Video Game
A new educational video game has been launched by Tabula Digita, an education software company, designed with multiplayer capabilities allowing students to compete, individually or in groups, with other students outside the classroom.
(7/3/2007)
Lawrence Township Licenses Haiku LMS
The Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township in Indiana has adopted learning maagement system Haiku LMS from software developer Haiku Inc., the company reported last week. Teachers will begin using it in the fall. Also announced was a new version of Haiku LMS--2.0--which adds functional and UI enhancements.
(7/2/2007)
Q&A-Based Ed Site Launched by ePals
ePals, a developer of learning collaboration products, has launched Ask ePals, a Web service designed to answer questions about education. The company collaborated with Yedda.com, a question and answer search platform, to provide the education question-based Web site.
(7/2/2007)
Second Life: Do You Need One? (Part 1)
Second Life appears to be the biggest online community to hit the Internet in recent times. It's a 3D digital world, imagined, created, and owned by its residents, which number more than 7 million from more than 100 countries at the time of this writing. It's not a site that most K-12 educators would consider using, as Second Life requires residents in its main grid to be at least 18. A number of businesses, universities, libraries, museums, and a few educational organizations that cater to K-12 have joined Second Life, and at least one middle school, Suffern Middle School (NY). As a newbie, I wondered what the excitement is all about and decided to explore. What I found was that reading about Second Life and actually experiencing it are a world apart.
(6/28/2007)
ESL Social Network/Portal Debuts
English as a second language (ESL) startup AppleESL.com (Hollywood, CA) has unveiled a new ESL Web portal of the same name, which provides teachers and students with online and downloadable tools, materials, activity templates, lesson plans, and audio and video files.
(6/28/2007)
Promethean Launches Online Professional Development
Educational software and hardware provider Promethean has launched a new professional development program for educators. The online learning system, Promethean Learning, which debuted at the 2007 NECC show in Atlanta this week, is designed to help teachers improve their skills with interactive whiteboards.
(6/28/2007)
5 Schools and Districts Deploy Angel LMS
Angel Learning this week announced that five more K-12 schools and districts have signed on with its Angel LMS learning management system. While learning management systems/course management systems are typically associated with higher education, Angel said that it's seeing K-12 institutions adopting its LMS "to offer virtual classes and online professional development and to provide 21st century learning experiences with anytime, anywhere access to learning content and resources."
(6/28/2007)
'Peer Connection' Targets Instructional Coaching
PBS TeacherLine this week rolled out (another) new service for educators at the 2007 NECC show in Atlanta. The latest one, dubbed PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection, is designed to help educators tasked with instructional coaching responsibilities.
(6/28/2007)
netTrekker D.I. Adds Skills Channel to Online Tool
Thinkronize this week added a new "21st Century Skills Channel" to its netTrekker d.i. educational search engine. Thinkronize, a developer of K-12 education technologies, said the addition came as a response to the challenge that K-12 schools are perceived as failing to supply students with skills they need to be effective members of the United States workforce. The announcement was made at the 2007 NECC show in Atlanta.
(6/28/2007)
Northern California Schools Access Pokemon Learning League
Pokemon Learning League is coming to schools in Northern California thanks to a new partnership with the Northern California Media and Technology Consortia (NCMTC) and the Ed1Stop portal. News of the partnership was announced at the 2007 NECC convention, going on this week in Atlanta, where the company behind Pokemon Learning League, Pokemon USA, also introduced a new online assessment system for the program.
(6/27/2007)
18 Texas Districts Get Unitedstreaming
At the NECC show in Atlanta, Discovery Education announced that 18 Texas Regional Education Service Centers have signed on for the company's unitedstreaming service through the 2011/2012 school year. The agreement brings unitedstreaming to more than 3.8 million students, or 90 percent of the Education Service Center regions in the state.
(6/27/2007)
