Flash interactions the easy way — from theelearningcoach.com
Do you ever wish you had the time, budget or staff to add more interactive learning activities to your online courses? I recently came across a company that fills this gap with engaging Flash Interactions, eLearning Templates, Articulate Skins and Flash Games that can be imported into most rapid development authoring systems. The company is the eLearning Brothers—otherwise known as Andrew and Shawn Scivally.
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WordPress introduced a brand-new subscription feature [on 9/10]— from WordPress.com
WordPress Subscriptions appear as a tab in the top menu bar when logged in and browsing around WordPressWordPress.com blogs and as a tab on a user’s WordPress.com homepage. The top menu tab can be used to instantly subscribe to any WordPress.com blog, and when managing your subscriptions, you can also add RSS-enabled blogs from around the web simply by typing the blog or site’s URL in a field. New post notifications are available via e-mail and IM, but they aren’t sent to new subscribers by default.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announces $100 million Innovation Fund to invest in education initiatives globally — from businesswire.com
HMH Innovation Fund will help develop and bring to market groundbreaking new products for delivering individualized learning solutions and classroom technologies; company also investing an additional $300 million in broader technology initiatives over the next three years
BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Global education leader Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) today announced the formal creation of a $100 million fund to support innovative ideas for new products to promote and enhance student achievement, individualized learning and effective technology integration in the classroom. The HMH Innovation Fund will be aimed at supporting emerging education initiatives and programs, as well as accelerating new technology development with the goal of bringing to market and spurring adoption of innovative solutions that can play a critical role in transforming education.
Why is the device compelling? [Marc] Andreessen and [Osman] Rashid talk about how Kno is offering a total product – software, hardware and services – that will be compelling to the college user. They can purchase textbooks and view them just as they look in printed format. Users will be able to take notes, draw on the pages, etc., just like the print versions. And they’ll be able to access those books on a variety of devices – even eventually their desktop and laptops – because Kno’s software is built on webkit and designed to run on a variety of hardware setups. And there’s a normal web browser too for the Internet in general.
As for textbook pricing, Rashid says the model will work. Imagine an iTunes for college textbooks, he says, and users who purchase the tablet and all their books will be paying about the same amount v. just buying print books over the first 13 months. That means individual books on the Kno will be priced lower than the average of $100 for the print versions.
Free Wolfram|Alpha Back-to-School webinars for K–12 educators — from NovemberLearning.com
Optimizing web media for mobile learning — from The Upside Learning Solutions Blog by Abhijit Kadle
We’ve recently been delivering simple content just-in-time for access through the websites that are designed to run on mobile devices. It was easier said than done, here are some lessons we picked up along the way.
From DSC:
Thanks Abhijit for sharing the lessons/learnings/advice/resources here!
Taleo to acquire Learn.com
Extends Talent Management Breadth; Powers Social and Formal Learning
Taleo Corporation, the leading provider of on-demand talent management solutions, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire strategic partner Learn.com, Inc. for approximately $125 million in cash. With the acquisition, Taleo will extend its Talent Management suite, becoming the only public vendor to offer best-in-class solutions across the four critical components of a talent-optimized organization: recruiting management to source, assess and acquire talent; performance management to establish goals and create career and succession plans; compensation management to establish a true “pay-for-performance” process between corporate objectives and individuals’ contributions; and now learning management to support social and formal development.
Every aspect of Taleo’s ecosystem benefits from this acquisition, here is how…
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Cisco seeking to acquire Skype: TechCrunch — Yahoo News
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US networking giant Cisco has made an offer to acquire Internet communications firm Skype, technology blog TechCrunch said Monday. TechCrunch, citing what it described as “one of our more reliable sources,” said the San Jose, California-based Cisco is seeking to acquire Skype before the Internet telephony company makes an initial public offering or IPO.
“Google was also rumored to be sniffing around Skype,” TechCrunch said, “but antitrust concerns may have persuaded them not to make an actual offer.”
Addendum from 9/2/10:
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— Resource from Scott Meech, and his resource-packed 8/14/10 presentation here.
