Learning Apps/Tools
- U Arizona Brings Phoenix Mars Mission to iTunes U
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6/3/2008
The University of Arizona has brought video and animation relating to the Phoenix Mars Mission onto iTunes U, the education-focused portal hosted on Apple's iTunes. U Arizona is the lead on the mission, the first in a NASA program aimed at launching smaller missions to Mars designed to complement larger ones.
- Adobe Intros Acrobat 9, Launches Acrobat.com Beta
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6/2/2008
Adobe Monday announced details of its forthcoming major revision to the entire Acrobat family: Acrobat 9. The company also debuted a new Acrobat.com collaboration beta site and announced an updated Creative Suite (version 3.3), which will incorporate the upcoming Acrobat 9 Pro software.
- Students Get Web-based Planning and Time Management Service
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6/2/2008
Studiolo Systems has gone into beta testing with StudyRails.com, a Web application intended to help students improve their academic performance by optimizing their study habits. StudyRails provides step-by-step, personalized study plans, e-mail and cell phone study reminders and the blocking of social networking Web sites, software and games during study time.
- Smart To Update Classroom Response System in July
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5/29/2008
Education technology developer Smart Technologies this week announced a new version of its Senteo interactive response system, Senteo 2.0. The free upgrade is expected to be available in July.
- Social Networking: Learning Theory in Action
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5/28/2008
There has been a lot of recent debate on the benefits of social networking tools and software in education. While there are good points on either side of the debate, there remains the essential difference in theoretical positioning. Can social networking both as an instructional concept and user skill be integrated into the conventional approaches to teaching and learning? Do the skills developed within a social networking environment have value in the more conventional environments of learning?
- Frankenstein in the University
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5/28/2008
In our day-to-day encounters with new media, online education, and vendor software products, we may sometimes be tempted to believe that encroaching technology is controlling the way people teach and learn. Is there a monster in our midst, determining our actions?
- Live@edu Integrates Exchange Labs
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5/27/2008
Microsoft's Live@edu, a suite of online tools focused specifically toward education, has now been expanded to include Exchange Labs, which is similar to a hosted Exchange service but with prototype features that are not yet available to the general public. The move brings expanded e-mail options to campus IT departments, including 10 GB of space per account, as free added features.
- Office Live Workspace Beta Released Internationally
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5/23/2008
Microsoft this week released an international beta of its Office Live Workspace (OLW) suite of productivity tools. The company also quietly launched an Office Live Update last week that takes on performance issues and brings in some additional functionality when working with Office 2007, XP, and 2003.
- Paper-Based Materials Distorted Ways of Learning
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5/21/2008
Analog materials, slow, heavy, costly, and hard to distribute, came to define education especially after the introduction of print. Adaptations to the limitations of analog came to seem the right and only way to teach and learn. But now digital media are restoring communication and collaboration capabilities, returning us to more natural (and historic) ways of learning.
- New Blackboard Sync Application Leverages Facebook
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5/14/2008
Blackboard Inc. today announced Blackboard Sync, an application that allows students to receive course updates and communicate with classmates while logged on to Facebook.
- Standards: The Sooner the Better
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5/14/2008
Technology solutions work best when they well together. That is why the nonprofit group IMS Global Learning Consortium is developing learning tools interoperability standards for the education technology community...
- Wikis Get Users Talking at MIT, Johns Hopkins
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5/14/2008
In many ways, college campuses are an obvious implementation for a wiki tool. The decentralized nature of the technology and its ability to allow a wide range of individuals or groups to contribute ideas into a single area through Web browsers make wikis simple and compelling for higher education uses.
- Aplia Launches Web-based Interactive Homework System
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5/9/2008
Cengage Learning's Aplia division has launched a new Web-based homework system called Grade It Now. The system combines aspects of practice problems with graded problems to encourage students to improve results as they work.
- Texas A&M System Signs Distribution Deal for Virtual Clinical Learning Lab
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5/8/2008
Texas A&M University has signed a license agreement with BreakAway Ltd., a developer of game-based technology, for the worldwide rights to Pulse!! The Virtual Clinical Learning Lab. Pulse is a federally funded project in development at the Corpus Christi campus that allows medical professionals to practice decision-making protocol and experiential skills on PCs in a virtual hospital setting. The agreement grants BreakAway the rights to develop, market and distribute Pulse.
- Tegrity Records 325,000 Hours of Lectures
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5/8/2008
Ed tech developer Tegrity reported this week that usage of its Campus 2.0 classroom capture system hit record levels last year, including, among other things, capturing 325,000 hours of faculty lectures on Tegrity servers in a 12-month period.
- Maple 12 Enhances Math Engine, Builds on Engineering Tools
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5/6/2008
Math software developer Maplesoft has released Maple 12, a long-anticipated update to the company's flagship math application for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and Solaris. The new version features an enhanced mathematics engine, new tools for engineers, and features that are designed to make the program easier to use in instructional settings.
- Idaho State Simulates Emergency Response in Second Life
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5/1/2008
Imagine entering the virtual world Second Life to discover that a flu pandemic requires you, a health care professional, to attend to stricken patients lying on the streets around an over-capacity virtual hospital. When you report in to collect your virtual uniform, you're told what your responsibilities will be during the disaster and to whom you'll report.
- Online Writing Remediation Program Targets Incoming Freshmen
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5/1/2008
Ed tech developer Vantage Learning has launched a new edition of its writing remediation program, targeting high school seniors and incoming college freshmen. My Access! College Edition extends the standard "School Edition," designed for K-12, with greater emphasis on analysis and interpretation, as well as additional features.
- Classroom and Community Intersect in Workflow Management
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4/30/2008
Integrating the classroom with the community to give students hands-on experience is a laudable goal, but not always easy to do. At the University of Arizona, J. Leon Zhao's upper-level and graduate business students gain an understanding of workflow management software and business applications through real projects in the surrounding business community in Tucson.
- Wyoming Colleges Bolster Digital Libraries with 'Academic Complete' Database
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4/29/2008
The Wyoming Community College Commission, which has seven colleges, and the University of Wyoming have subscribed to the ebrary Academic Complete e-book database, according to the company.
- Mobile Learning in Higher Education
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4/23/2008
The term "Nomadic" has been used to describe current college students' culture of wireless and mobile connectedness in the sense that they are not "rooted" but incredibility flexible and fluid when it comes to their social connections and their virtual life culture. This refers not only to their uses of social networking tools but also to the reality that they are connected wirelessly in any situation and for any reason. They are essentially nomads when it comes to their life "space."
- NASA Gets Serious about Educational Gaming
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4/23/2008
NASA this week moved a step closer to branching into educational gaming. The agency presented its vision of a science education-focused massively multiplayer online game to more than 200 potential software development partners in a workshop Monday sponsored by NASA Learning Technologies, an educational technology incubator project.
- Project Albany Moves into Google Turf
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4/22/2008
Microsoft revealed Friday that its code-named "Albany" project is a consumer-oriented hosted service that provides Excel, PowerPoint, and Word applications, as well as security and collaboration tools.
- Will the CafeScribe Acquisition Give a Boost to Electronic Textbooks?
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4/16/2008
The digital textbook is one of those technologies that seem obvious but can take a long time to gain traction. In March, the concept got a boost when long-time textbook distributor and retailer Follet Corp. acquired Salt Lake City-based Fourteen40, and, along with it, CafeScribe, a Web site in its beta phase of offering electronic textbooks.
- ePortfolios: Hot Once Again
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4/16/2008
The question about ePortfolios is no longer "What is it?" Now, it's "How can we do it?" A Web-based ePortfolio provides the answer.
