10/6/2008
The Digital Arts Alliance, a consortium led by the Pearson Foundation that promotes digital arts in K-12 education, is expanding its membership with the addition of Fordham University. This follows on the heels of three other organizations joining the group back in July--the National Education Association (NEA) Foundation, the Foundation for Investor Education, and Employers For Education Excellence (E3).
10/1/2008
With digital technologies and Web 2.0 surrounding us, information -- and knowledge generation -- is abundant as never before. This creates some big changes for higher education: With no scarcity of information or collaboration opportunities, "seat time" in a classroom is no longer just about delivering content. Trent Batson asks, "How does a teacher reclaim the value of students coming to class in this time?"
9/25/2008
Distance education students at the University of Wisconsin-Stout are enjoying the personal touch in their online technical communications program thanks to deployment of lecture capture from Echo360. EchoSystem captures in-class voice, video, and visual aids from such devices as smartboards and tablet PCs, then publishes the combined media to a school's learning management system, iTunes U portal, or Web portal.
9/25/2008
Lecture capture has been gaining momentum in recent years, but that momentum is being outpaced by student demand. According to new research released this week by the University of Wisconsin-Madison involving about 7,500 undergraduate and graduate students, an overwhelming 82 percent of students said they would prefer courses that offer online lectures over traditional classes that do not include an online lecture component. The researchers also pointed out the implications for these findings extend well beyond the classroom.
9/24/2008
This week Adobe Systems Inc. made public the software suite it calls its biggest release ever--the fourth version of its Creative Suite. Campus Technology talked with Adobe Vice President for Worldwide Education Peter Isaacson about the Adobe CS4 launch and some implications for higher education.
9/23/2008
Adobe debuted Creative Suite 4 Tuesday, with all-new versions of its major development, design, publishing, and video/motion graphics applications, along with new and modified pricing and licensing schemes for both K-12 and post-secondary education. We have a inside look at the new features in each of the core applications, along with preliminary findings based on a pre-release of the Creative Suite 4 Master Collection.
9/19/2008
A new study by Saint Mary's University of Minnesota concluded that students who used the on-campus lecture capture archives, recorded by Tegrity, tended to have a higher cumulative GPA than those who didn't.
9/17/2008
Maybe you've heard people ask: "Who needs large lecture halls to learn? Who needs a sound studio or post-production facilities when you can have them on your laptop? If high-end lab equipment or scientific simulation software is also available via the Web, why do you need to visit a campus to run an experiment?" Is "Why attend college at all?" now a serious question?
9/17/2008
Echo360 has announced enhancements to its lecture capture platform, EchoSystem. Foremost is a Web-based editor that gives instructors the option to tailor their recorded lectures.
9/17/2008
Kadoo has launched a site where users can manage, store, and selectively share their digital content from one place. The service was created by executives from Blackboard, which produces products and services for the education market.
9/15/2008
eCollege has announced a partnership with Cdigix that will give students at institutions using the company's course management system integrated access to rich media assets, including audio and video, among other things.
9/11/2008
The University of Texas at Austin has signed an agreement with Copyright Clearance Center to adopt CCC's Annual Copyright License for academic institutions. This license gives librarians, faculty, copy shop staff, and others with pre-approved permission to use content in coursepacks, e-reserves, course management systems, and research collaboration.
9/9/2008
Teachers Domain, a free online resource for educators, has announced expanded content in science, math, art, social studies, and language arts. The online library is also launching two new editions: Teachers' Domain College Edition, designed for higher education, and VITAL New York on Teachers' Domain, providing resources for New York teachers that are aligned with the state's core curriculum.
9/5/2008
The Pacific-10 Conference (Pac-10), a group of sports teams from 10 colleges and universities, has expanded the use of its BlueArc Titan storage solution housed at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to store dozens of terabytes of game footage. In the 2008-2009 season, all of the Pac-10 football, women's volleyball, and men's and women's basketball teams will access opponents' video for competitive analysis from Titan storage.
9/4/2008
DVcreators.net has released DV Kitchen, a new video encoding and publishing application for Mac OS X designed specifically for creating materials to be posted on the Web.
9/2/2008
Adobe Tuesday cracked the lid of its most closely guarded secret: Creative Suite 4 will be unveiled later this month.
8/29/2008
Arizona State University has signed an agreement with Modavox to Webcast the Sustainability Summit the school is hosting in Washington, DC September 17, 2008. Modavox will facilitate the delivery of streaming audio and video.
8/29/2008
Georgetown University has partnered with FORA.tv to launch a video channel that will share university content. Georgetown will use FORA.tv's content delivery platform to reach a global audience with its issue-oriented video. The channel will feature programming with individual university faculty who are experts in their field as well as world leaders speaking on Georgetown's campus.
8/27/2008
Two Pennsylvania teaching colleagues with an interest in music and technology are bringing remote experts into classrooms at almost no cost, using Skype's free videoconferencing technology.
8/27/2008
Columbia University has been beta testing its content through iTunes U, the Apple desktop media player for education-related podcasting. The New York-based university expects to go live with its release at the start of the fall semester.
8/26/2008
McGill University Library in Montreal will be using a Kirtas Technologies APT BookScan 2400RA to digitize its collections. The company says that the 2400RA is capable of acquiring page images at the rate of 2,400 pages per hour. The library will be working with Ristech, a Canadian reseller, to implement the digitization solution.
8/13/2008
Skoobit has developed a textbook rental system to allow college students to rent text books for months, semesters, or the year. College students will be able to rent any textbook for as long as needed with the simple commitment of returning it once they're done using it.
8/6/2008
Panopto has released CourseCast 2.0, an update to the company's classroom capture system that's available free to academic users. CourseCast 2.0 had previously been available as part of Panopto's beta program for educators since June.
8/6/2008
For more than twenty years, we educational technologists have talked about "integrating information technology into higher education." The implication was that education would stay the same and information technology would benignly slip in and cause no ruckus at all. This rhetoric no longer applies, if it ever did, and does a disservice to us as we work through the intricacies of this age.
8/5/2008
Sakai, a popular open source learning management system, is adding content from McGraw-Hill Higher Education to its repertoire of educational tools. Through a technology called Katana, developed by McGraw-Hill Learning Solutions and The ETUDES Consortium, Sakai users will be able to tap directly into McGraw-Hill's electronic learning resources, including online courses, digital media, and curricula.