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Moodlerooms Supports LSU's Move to Moodle

2/15/2008

Louisiana State University has signed on with Moodlerooms to provide support, hosting, and other services for its Moodle deployment. As we reported in November, LSU is replacing two learning management systems on its campus with Moodle, an open-source LMS/CMS popular in higher education and elsewhere.

Blackboard Trial Against Desire2Learn in Court

2/14/2008

Just a week after higher education software maker Blackboard announced "tremendous" financial results for the year, it is finally facing off in a small-town Texas court against rival Desire2Learn in a patent dispute over e-learning software. Blackboard is seeking $17 million in lost revenue as well as an injunction against the company, which is based in Canada.

Elluminate Builds Bridge to Moodle

2/12/2008

Collaborative technology developer Elluminate has brought its Live! virtual classroom software to the Moodle platform. The company released a piece of software Tuesday called Elluminate Bridge for Moodle, which is designed to integrate Live! into the open-source learning management system.

SJCD Joins Capella Higher Education Alliance

2/12/2008

San Jacinto College District, near Houston, TX, has joined Capella University's Education Alliance Program. Capella, an online university that serves 20,000 students, offers online degree programs focused on higher education faculty, administrators, and students.

PASSHE Rolls Out Distance Learning System-wide

2/11/2008

The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) will be extending its distance learning and online collaborative efforts across all 14 universities in its system. The initiative includes a contract with Wimba to deploy its Wimba Collaboration Suite system-wide for collaboration between students and faculty outside of traditional settings.

U Colorado Classroom Capture Supports Distance Learning for Military

2/6/2008

Soldiers in the United States military who want to take college courses while they’re deployed overseas face some tough challenges. But they can also represent an attractive market for universities, especially those interesting in recruiting more business graduate school students to specific programs.

Blackboard Academic Suite 8 Integrates Plagiarism Prevention

2/5/2008

Blackboard has released version 8 of the Blackboard Academic Suite 8. The latest release of the learning management system for academic institutions adds a variety of enhancements driven in large part by feedback from the user community, including improvements for administrators and IT, student self- and peer assessments, improved grading features, and the integration of Blackboard's SafeAssign, a plagiarism detection and prevention service.

Rapid Intake Rolls Out eLearning Development Platform

2/5/2008

Rapid Intake, an eLearning solution provider, has launched a new-Web-based platform for collaborative development of eLearning projects. The new tool, Unison, debuted Monday at the Training 2008 Conference & Expo.

S.A.T. Prep in Second Life: It's Social Once Again

2/4/2008

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.

Collaborative Computing at the University of Washington

1/30/2008

Perhaps more than anything else, the sight of a group of students clustered around a single computer screen, jostling for space and a better view, made Karalee Woody aware of the need for better collaborative computing tools at the University of Washington.

IBM Debuts Web 2.0, Collaborative Technologies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.