Education News & Articles

While everyone else milled around at CES waving new products left, right and center, Apple is quietly getting on with the business of iPad and iPhone development. It also managed to sell rather more Macs than experts predicted.

When we talk about the digital media consumption of teens and young adults, from social media to the mobile web, we often wonder how the future of online media will evolve. Rarely, however, do we consider what it means for the future of education.

On Saturday, March 6, educators and technologists alike gathered for TEDxNYED, an all-day conference, examining the role of new media and technology in shaping the future of education.

In the heartland content management is alive. Since 1998, AllofE Solutions has been building a comprehensive suite of web-based products, custom applications and interactive media solutions.

Higher education, k-12 school districts and hospitals (among others) have long recognized the power and innovation of their enterprise content management system called ContentM. We recently spoke with Amit Guha, President and CEO of AllofE Solutions about content management, eCurriculum and the impact of community. 

In just two tiny weeks the world will celebrate World Usability Day 2009 -- a day when we can focus on designing for a sustainable world. It may be just one day, but it’s intended to inspire us for years to come. Come along and find your enthusiasm.

What happens when you take Web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, chat rooms, video conferencing and forums; mix them with a popular open-source CMS and apply this solution to the education environment?

This is exactly what Social Media Classroom (SMC) is doing in hopes of bringing two-way dialogue and interaction to the education field.

PBwiki, the world’s largest provider of business and educational hosted wikis, announced that two new programs have been created that will donate up to US$ 25 million of award-winning wiki-based collaboration software.

Educational web managers are often lonely, misunderstood geeks who are crucial members of the communications staff but get unfairly lumped in with IT.

These dedicated souls must synthesize content for a variety of audiences (faculty, administration, parents, alumni, students) while also single-handedly updating calendars, uploading forms, and managing schedules.

Giunti have a pretty impressive track record when it comes to educational materials - in 1841, Alessandro and Felice Paggi set up the printing and publishing company Giunti Editore in Florence, specialising in the publication of school textbooks and books for children and young people.

Giunti have continued in the same tradition up to the present day, but with modern refinements, and Giunti Labs is now one of Europe’s leading e-learning and mobile content management solution providers.

So it is interesting to hear that Giunti Labs has acquired the Australian federated digital repository system HarvestRoad®.

A is for Apple, B is for Beta-testing, E is for…eCopy?

At least that’s what software developer eCopy would like today’s educational institutions to believe. They are delving into the world of education with their new line of document imaging and management solutions targeted toward — yes — educational institutions.

Not many are aware of the immense value of marketing in education — that is, opening up the world of the classroom to the eyes of the public. Yet it’s often difficult to let visitors and prospective students catch a glimpse of what life is like in the labs or in seminars without causing major disruption or offsetting the curriculum.

Enter iTunes.

Apparently the open source crowd isn’t the only circle suffering from pinched toes, courtesy of Microsoft.

Becta, the education technology branch of the UK, has just filed a complaint with the Office of Fair Trading regarding Microsoft’s “anti-competitive practices” in the academic software license sector.

The University of California, Davis has been tinkering with the idea of implementing a Web content management system since 2005.

To help decide which road to take, the school initiated a survey of what other campuses were using. The results were published this week and offer valuable insight into who is currently winning the Web CMS war.

The results also betray how universities, which face among the greatest content management challenges of all, cope with web content issues.

CMS Watch and AIIM are joining forces to help enterprises in North America and Europe better understand business process management.

CMS Watch is an analyst firm that releases industry-oriented reports, while AIIM serves as the international authority on ECM, providing courses, certification and awards in the sector.

Government institutions and higher education purveyors have major content issues. Increasingly, they’re turning to the pros to help assist them - not a bad deal for the enterprise and Web CMS industries at large.

With this in mind, content infrastructure vendor Day was selected by Oklahoma University to assist in developing the institution’s online personality across a user-scape of over 17,000 unique daily visitors.

Despite a broad track record across the digital space, the notion of wikis in the workplace still makes enterprises twitch with fear. Whether because they don’t fully understand what a wiki is, or because the word itself conjures up visions of Lord of the Flies (employees running amok, unmanageable access to all kinds of information), many fail to realize the benefits of this helpful collaboration tool.

Wikis can help employees share information, track workflow and allow users to edit and author information with ease, often saving time and money.