Elearning - June/July 2008 - (Page 12) News Correction Accepting their awards as suppliers of the best e-learning products of last year were Keith Dalton and Michael Bone of the American Management Association. The organization was misidentified in the last issue of this magazine. Learning Fellowships Offered A new program that will support learning professionals pursuing an advanced degree (master or doctorate level) or interested in a research sabbatical is being offered at The Masie Center in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. This summer, for a period of one semester (two to four months), candidates will be provided housing, a stipend for living expenses, full access to the Center and the Learning Consortium. They will have an opportunity to spend time on a research project in the learning arena, work with the Masie Center staff on key learning projects and shadow Elliott Masie or other CLOs in the Learning Consortium. Candidates will be selected by an advisory panel of colleagues, academics and learning executives. Fellowships can begin at the start of the fall, winter or summer semester/season. To apply, mail a personal note, outlining your interest in the learning fellowship. Send your note to: fellowship@masie.com. Deals SCIENCE APPLICATIONS International Corp. (SAIC) has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Icon Systems, Inc. This acquisition strengthens SAIC’s position in the virtual and live training environments and allows the company to provide a more comprehensive array of capabilities in this arena. Icon will be an operation within SAIC’s Analysis, Simulations, Systems, Engineering and Training business unit under the continuing leadership of Himanshu Parikh, Icon’s co-founder and chief executive officer. KNOWLEDGE ANYWHERE has signed an agreement with AccelSales to offer the SensaTrack product line. The agreement gives Knowledge Anywhere the ability to re-sell SensaTrack technology and assume management of its current clients. WASHINGTON COUNTY (Md.) Public School System is using NetOp School software to provide computer instruction for more than 20,000 students at 42 schools. The software allows instructors to view and monitor 12 June/July 2008 Elearning! each student computer in a lab or media center. A thumbnail image appears on the instructor’s screen and if necessary, the instructor can send a warning message to remind a student to stay on task. It is even possible to block certain software programs and applications, such as instant messaging, completely. SKILLSOFT, SUMTOTAL AND EEDO are partnering to ease interoperability issues for customers. The partnership leverages Web services and learning industry standards via SkillSoft’s Open Learning Services Architecture (OLSA) to reduce costly proprietary integrations between content, learning management systems and learning content management systems. The partnership is working with the Aviation Industry CBT Committee (AICC) to further develop their Content Services Architecture (CSA). SkillSoft has offered OLSA APIs for submission to CSA (formerly SDA). The submission process is currently on-going. RAPID E-LEARNING continues to push into new industry sectors with the announcement by Atlantic Link that the U.K.’s Trinity Mirror is the latest organization to purchase its Content Point authoring tools, with a view to expanding the use of elearning across the company. Trinity Mirror publishes more than 200 regional newspapers, five national titles and operates more than 300 online brands. PLATO LEARNING, Inc., has renewed and expanded an agreement with Hot Springs (Arkansas) School District (HSSD) to provide additional enrichment, credit recovery, intervention and assessment solutions for its entire student body. HSSD has expanded its implementation to include assessment and intervention solutions for its entire 3,700student district, including the addition of Plato Learning’s complete online curriculum for grades K-8 to its four elementary schools. QWEST COMMUNICATIONS International Inc. has won a new 10-year, $16 million contract with the Jefferson County School District to provide highbandwidth data networking and Internet services to meet the ever-growing technology needs of students. The school district will connect 107 schools using Qwest Metro Optical Ethernet (QMOE) services, providing the students, teachers and staff of each school with Internet speeds up to 100 Mbps. This upgrade will allow the district to successfully implement a wide variety of critical e-learning initiatives for students that include online courses, virtual schools, online testing/assessment programs and Internet-based professional development for staff. THE U.S. ARMY is using Saba Learning and Saba Centra as part of an extensive upgrade to the Army Learning Management System (ALMS), Release 2.0. With Saba, The U.S. Army Distributed Learning System (DLS), a program under Program Executive Office Enterprise Information Systems (PEO EIS), is able to leverage a common platform to standardize training throughout the U.S. Army as well as offer new functionality.
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