Tag Archives: education

Apps, B2C, Software

New iPad App Gets Children School-Ready

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Parents are preparing to send their children off to school for the first time. An Australian Mother of two has developed a way to give children entering school in this technological age a head start by creating an educational iPad app.

Rebecca Monument said that she, like most parents were aware that basic literacy skills developed in the home long before a child starts school.

“I created the app because I wanted to give my children the best of every possible opportunity,” said Ms Monument. “I was worried as my kids weren’t learning the correct way to write the alphabet, that they would have to re-learn it when they started school.”

After the application was released in October this year Ms Monument approached a local teacher for feedback. Ms Tanya Burton from Whitehouse Primary School in Australia agrees that Writeforschool is a resourceful learning tool for young children, and that the app that will complement the introduction of iPads into the prep classrooms in 2013.

“The application combines many features that other similar writing applications fail to deliver, like a variety of accents and a choice of the writing fonts taught in Australian schools” Ms Burton notes. “The large number of fonts back up what is taught in the school curriculum; it not only includes letters and numbers but blends of letters.”

The idea came to Ms Monument and she began developing the iPad application Writeforschool after her children, aged five and six began taking great interest in playing the games on her iPad.

“I thought if I could make educational game for my children, they could begin to learn to write in the cursive they are taught at their school the correct way,” Ms Monument explained. “My children love the app and its exciting graphics that can be completely personalised.”

Ms Monument hopes that her application is able to help as many young children as possible get a head start for this school year.

Via EPR Network
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Apps, B2C, Internet, Online, Services, Social Networking, Web, Web 2.0

The Learning Genome Project unveils a new solution to personalized education through crowd sourcing

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Educator Kelly Tenkely invites educators, parents and investors around the world to join in personalizing education.

Due to an increased disenfranchisement with the education system, Colorado educator, Kelly Tenkely, recognized the need for a product that would honor the uniqueness of children by personalizing learning. Kelly created the Learning Genome Project to fulfill this need.

“Every child deserves to be met right where they are in learning, rather than expected to fit a one-size-fits-all solution. In our society, we have managed to customize everything from ringtones to coffee, why should learning be different?” Said the Learning Genome Project creator, Kelly Tenkely.

The Learning Genome makes personalized learning available to children around the world by:
* Gathering information about an individual child including: their unique interests/passions, learning style preferences, multiple intelligence strengths, brain dominance, and maturation level.
* Crowdsourcing the tagging of both free, as well as premium, education resources and curriculum with hundreds of learning attributes (the ‘genes’ of learning).
* Matching resources and curriculum to students, recommending the materials that best meet their needs and creating a custom learning map for each child.
* Utilizing an open API so that schools, parents, and districts can build additional functionality to meet their specific needs.

This is the Learning Genome Project’s free “hub” that makes personalized learning available to every child.

Said Kelly, “Every child, regardless of their economic situation, deserves an education that is tailored to them. Society benefits when we help kids learn how to best utilize their unique gifts and passions.”

Premium features of the Learning Genome Project will include:
* A student information system
* An e-portfolio
* A teacher and student planner
* Blogging tools
* An e-learning center
* An individual learning map for each child

The premium features will work seamlessly with the Learning Genome hub giving students, teachers, and parents a complete solution to personalized learning.

The Learning Genome Project is seeking crowd-sourced funding through Indiegogo and will use the $85,000 raised to begin programming. The project has 45 days to raise the funds and can be found here: http://www.indiegogo.com/thelearninggenomeproject?c=home&a=1232629

In addition to her work on the Learning Genome Project, Kelly Tenkely is an educator, a prolific education blogger, and created a new educational model. This model is put into practice at Anastasis Academy, a school that Kelly co-founded that is just beginning its 2nd year in operation.

Via EPR Network
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APIs, Apps, B2C, Internet, ISPs, Online, Services, Web

Huge Demand Inspires Edulabs to Reschedule Critical Webinar Series on Tablet Buying for Education

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Edulabs Learning Solutions Ltd., a leading Thai-based innovator of 21st Century electronic teaching systems (www.edulabsglobal.com), has received overwhelmingly positive daily responses and a higher-than-anticipated demand for its “must attend” Webinar series. The Webinar www.edulabsglobal.com/webinar) cover CRUCIAL considerations that buyers of tablets for educational institutions MUST understand before buying. The Webinars became immediately over-subscribed at launch, and so Edulabs Global has decided to re-launch the Webinar series with new times and dates in order to accommodate the increased interest and demand for registered seats.

Gregory Pommerenk, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Edulabs Learning Solutions, Ltd., explains, “There is no doubt that the world-wide demand and excitement for Tablet computers and Smartphones in education is growing stronger and stronger each and every day, and has fueled this increased interest in Edulabs’ Webinar series. With this also comes the need for knowledge and information that will assist the educational communities around the world to make sure that the money they are about to collectively spend is invested wisely, effectively and accurately.”

The digital learning revolution

Schools around the world are starting to proactively adopt mobile learning programs and initiatives, establish or upgrade their broadband infrastructures and also replace traditional textbooks with digital textbooks at an unprecedented rate. Top online learning institutions such as www.learning.com and www.epals.com have created eLearning material which has revolutionized the global education industry.

It is estimated by respected research organizations that in the K-12 (Primary and Secondary) educational sector alone, there will be a need for in excess of 200 million Tablet computers and over 400 million Smartphones within the next 3-5 years. This is not including the huge need and demand in developing countries and underdeveloped areas of countries such as China, India and Brazil, which affects hundreds of millions of school-aged children and teens.

Explosion in educational demand for eLearning solutions.

In today’s interconnected and inter-dependent globalized world, the global community at large has finally awoken to the fact that having billions of uneducated and unskilled people, especially youth, affects the entire world, and is subsequently striving more proactively than ever to improve the state of education amongst youths. Edulabs Global feels that all of these additional areas are poised to soon explode in terms of demand. The countries of Africa, China, India, Brazil and many ASEAN countries have combined populations in excess of 3 billion people, of which hundreds of millions of youth desperately need much improved and affordable educational solutions.

Subsequently, more digital educational content and applications are becoming available at affordable prices and more and more verifiable studies are proving the value of digital web-based education. This in turn prompts more countries, especially developing counties, to get wired with hi-speed infrastructures that are finally including even the most remote and previously unwired areas of these countries.

New times and dates for Edulabs Webinar Series

The new Webinar times and dates will be announced via our website and a formal press release during the week of February 20th, 2012. In addition to the impressive list of guest presenters and speakers that are already confirmed to attend, Edulabs is also in the process of adding several additional Tablet and Smartphone, Cyber-safety, Edu-tech and Digital Contents and Applications (including Digital Textbooks) companies that wish to participate in the Webinar series.

Please stay tuned to the Edulabs web site and news wires for upcoming announcements regarding the new times and dates of the Webinar series, and take part in these“cannot miss” exciting events!

Via EPR Network
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Internet, Online, Programming, Software

Flat Classroom Project @ Yew Chung International School of Beijing

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Once a week, Coco Yu walks into her Year 4 classroom at Yew Chung International School of Beijing (YCIS Beijing), logs onto a computer and starts communicating with other children her age who are located in schools stretching from England to India.

Yu is one of dozens of students at YCIS Beijing who are participating in a global collaborative project that joins together primary students from around the world via the Internet and Web 2.0 technologies, including Wikispaces and Ning, an online service that allows members to create social networks.

The project is called Flat Classroom. It is part of an emerging trend in internationally aware schools, like YCIS Beijing, that embrace a holistic and full-rounded educational approach to work collaboratively with others around the world in order to create students who are competitive and globally-minded. One of the main goals of the project is to “flatten” or lower the classroom walls so that two or more classes are joined virtually to become one large classroom.

“In Flat Classroom, we work a lot with computers and we go to Wiki, and we type what we do in Beijing. Maybe we Skype, and we talk to other children around the world, for example, we have a school in Mumbai, a school in England and Mill Creek and the US,” Yu, who is 9years old, said.

YCIS Beijing teachers who take part in the program say they can immediately see the perceptions of their students about the world and their place in it change as a result of participation in the project, which incorporates themes and lesson plans from “The World is Flat,” a ground-breaking book authored by the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Students also work collaboratively on projects with their peers located in different schools around the world. On February 21st at 8am, students used Skype to video chat with the primary students and parents at a US primary school who were attending their back-to-school night. It was an exciting link for both primary classes involved who exclaimed cheers when the video connection occurred, followed by a question and answer period that bounced back-and-forth between times zones.

Via EPR Network
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