We are pleased to announce that Open Knowledge Technologies, the Canadian authorized Moodle partner company for the past 4 years, has become Remote-Learner Canada. "Having worked closely over the past 4 years to bring quality online learning services to organizations in the US, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean countries it just made sense for our companies to become one organization" states Bryan Williams the company's CEO. Mike Churchward of Open Knowledge Technologies has become President and Chief Technology Officer for Remote-Learner. The company employs 35 people and maintains offices in Fishersville Virginia, Overland Park Kansas and Waterloo Ontario. Data centers are located in Overland Park and Newark Delaware, with a new data center planned for Q2-'09 in Waterloo that will service all Canadian clients. Remote-Learner has been offering educational technology services continously since 1982 and is the largest of the 40 worldwide Moodle partner companies. This announcement is good news for organizations moving to cost effective open source learning solutions. They will have assurance a strong vendor with years of experience is around to provide quality support services.
Remote-Learner released its Enterprise Learning Intelligence Suite for Moodle (ELIS) on March 23, 2009, an integrated stack of technologies designed to provide end-to-end management of an online learning program. ELIS is fully integrated with Moodle and includes a Curriculum Management component for greater control over enrollments and curriculum mapping, student notification and transcript/certificate tracking; business analytic reporting for generating permission-based reports from Moodle and other databases within an organization, and a learning object repository. ELIS leverages Remote-Learner's partnership relationship with JasperSoft and the Alfresco document management and content publishing system. ELIS is being released under the GPL license and will be fully supported for Remote-Learner hosting and contract support clients. Components within ELIS represent a very substantial savings over commercial programs providing similar functionality. Ask for a demo today!
I love ELIS -- it is working very well.
Darryl Draper - Subaru of America, Inc.
I was able to submit an ELIS report today to our academic superintendants
for our current program status (881 classes) since June, and they were satisfied.
I appreciate your efforts in developing a great product with lots of potential and for your support.
Matt Vernon - Minneapolis Public Schools
Remote-Learner is pleased to announce that it is a co-sponsor along with LSU of the upcoming MoodleMoot Orlando, being held concurrent with the annual Sloan-C ALN Confernece. This event will be focused on helping organization in higher education understand the issues of moving from Blackboard, WebCT or Angel onto Moodle. Speakers from several organizations will discuss strategies used during transition, course migration and faculty issues their selection committees dealt with during the process of vetting open source and Moodle. A second track of presenters will discuss the emerging movement of open digital textbook publishing, how this may drive down the cost of student textbooks and what higher ed can do to help facilitate the process. Participants can attend both the Sloan-C ALN event and the MoodleMoot at one low price.
Remote-Learner and Kaltura recently announced a joint relationship to bring their open source video streaming technology to the Moodle LMS platform. Kaltura was selected by Wikipedia (Fall '09), PBS and over 30,000 commercial organizations and schools to bring cost effective video resources online. "We are pleased to announce that the award winning Kaltura platform has now been integrated with Moodle as both a new Resource and Assignment type" states Jason Cole, Ph.D., Remote-Learner's COO. Kaltura allows teachers and students to add rich media to their online courses and simplifies asset management. Kaltura's Key Features Include:- Full Video Management Console - quick bulk upload of rich media content, content management, publishing and moderation (can be integrated with webcam or other lecture capture system) and also allows metadata normalization and synchronization
- Customizable Video Player - configurable player buttons and capabilities as well as a customizable player design (size, colors, branding etc.)
- Media Uploader - easy upload and import by faculty, administrators, and students from internal and external sites and databases of any rich-media content type
- Video Editor - standard or advanced editing capabilities
- Detailed Reporting and Analytics - visibility into video consumption and trends across the organization including content drop-off & student compliance
- Video-Presentation Tool - synchronization of video and specific presentation slides within a consolidated player
- Authentication & Single Sign-on - Kaltura can be integrated with Moodle's central authentication and registration systems for SSO
- Video Extensions – Moodle Resource (add video/edit video) and Assignment type integration at the course level with standard editing. Add grades to video Assignment uploads, create two separate video Resource types and more. See Integration FAQ.
Remote-Learner has announced support for the open source Mahara e-Portfolio system by joining the worldwide network of authorized Mahara partner service providers. Mahara is an open source e-portfolio system with a flexible display framework. Mahara, meaning 'think' or 'thought' in Te Reo Māori,
is a user centered environment with a permissions framework that enables
different views of an e-portfolio to be easily managed. Mahara also
features a weblog, resume builder and social networking system,
connecting users and creating online learner communities. We are pleased to offer our academic clients this exciting technology, fully integrated with Moodle, that allows student to create an e-portfolio during his/her academic years and to engineer their own social web 2.0 platform with supporting learning services. Mahara has been gaining ground, particularly in K-12, as the growing importance of e-portfolio systems is recognized by school administrators. Mahara was originally funded by New Zealand's Tertiary Education Commission and is supported with a Mellon Foundation grant.
Remote-Learner is pleased to announce that Michael Penney has joined our staff as Vice President for Products and Platforms. Michael was previously the Western Region Manager for Moodlerooms, a US Moodle partner company. In 2007, while at Humboldt State University in Northern California, Michael received a Mellon Foundation Grant for continuation of development work on the Moodle LMS he and his staff had started. Michael has been a regular contributor at Moodle.org for many years and has demonstrated outstanding achievement as an educational technology manager. "I am very pleased to have Michael on my senior staff and Leadership team, helping to guide our company's direction during this incredible time. I know he will bring our clients a level of expertise that will surpass their expectations" states Bryan Williams, Remote-Learner's CEO.
Remote-Learner is pleased to announce that Cindy Stillwell has joined our staff as Mid-Atlantic Regional Manager. Cindy spent several years working with Rosetta Stone and Learn.com before joining Remote-Learner, and brings a wealth of experience in online learning to her new position. A strong corporate background makes her uniquely qualified to address the needs of business and governmental organizations needing e-learning services that Remote-Learner provides. Cindy will work with clients throughout the Mid-Atlantic region including Washington D.C. and can be reached at cindy.stillwell@remote-learner.net or at extension 131.
eLearning Guild Research group and Edutopia magazine (published by George Lucas Educational Foundation) members have recognized Moodle with awards resulting from readership polling in recent surveys. Moodle took top honors in several categories as evidenced in The eLearning Guild 360 Report summary, including 3 Platinum and one Gold award. Edutopia readers named Moodle "Best open source software for education" in their survey. Moodle's installed base worldwide topped 50,000 organizations by January 2009. The recent addition of a new Roles feature within the stable Moodle 1.8 release is driving within educational, governmental and corporate learning environments.
Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines has selected Moodle and Remote-Learner.net as its platform and services provider for its new Corporate University, scheduled to start providing online courses for its 11,000 worldwide employees during 2007. All department area training managers within RCL and Celebrity X Cruises will collaborate on a centralized Corporate University, which will be administered through the Human Resources department. Brenda Siebenaler with the Guest Port Services area contracted with Remote-Learner for 3 days of Moodle training and consulting on starting the Corporate University in January, and will deploy their first course called Gold Anchor Standards in Q-1 '07. This course is taken by all new company employees. Welcome aboard Royal Caribbean and Celebrity X Cruises!
Remote-Learner.net and Elluminate, Inc. of Calgary Canada have announced an integration between the two programs. Course creators can now add a live meeting into their courses entirely from within Moodle, just like any other activity from the Add an activiy list. Meetings can be scheduled with moderators and participants and optionally assigned a grade value for attendance. Login to Elluminate is passed through automatically (no second sign-on) and there is a new side block that lists recorded sessions. Scheduled events appear on Moodle's calendar block showing time and date of the event. Clients who are hosting their own Elluminate sites can take advantage of this integration immediately, while users hosting with Elluminate should be able to use the new feature in the first quarter of 2007. Remote-Learner is offering support services for the adaptor, including integration with its Virtual School SMS extension (see story below) that allows for setting up counseling and tutoring sessions in Elluminate.
AirTran Airways has selected remote-Learner.net to host their new Corporate University called CrewPlace.com. According to Jamie Smith, Flight Operations Manager in Technology Development at AirTran Airways Pilot Training Center, the company will begin offering online courses to all Boeing 717 and 737 pilots first. Following initial roll-out AirTran will offer courseware for their flight attendents in the next phase. To accomodate the needs of a learning population spread out geographically and constantly on the go, Smith has created a unique authentication scheme and other features within Moodle that make remote login a simple process for first time users. According to Smith AirTran Airways management is watching the project closely and feels this is one way of demonstrating its committment to continuing employee development. Welcome AirTran Airways!
We are pleased to announce that Michelle Moore has joined our consulting staff as Director of Training on July 1, 2006. Moore has been an instructional technology specialist and math teacher at the Winfield Public School District in Kansas for the past 5 years, and has played a major role in organizing Moodle conferences over the past several years. She has recently completed her master’s degree from ESU in Instructional Design and Technology.Debren Ferris with ISTE Professional Development Services recently informed Michelle that she was selected as one of their best presenters at the 2006 conference in San Diego for her all day Moodle workshop. "Congratulations! I am pleased to share with you that out of the more than 130 workshop presenters at NECC 2006 in San Diego, you have been selected as one of our top ten percent “Best of the Best” workshop presenters. We feel this is quite an accomplishment given the fact that each year NECC attracts some of the best educational technology presenters in the country. The criteria for selection of our “Best of the Best” workshop presenters included quantitative and qualitative evaluation of numerous factors including workshop enrollments, participant evaluations, relevancy of topic, and overall audience appeal."
I would like to thank Blackboard for formalising their intents with respect to open source software in this way, and I'm very pleased that most institutions using open source will feel able to relax. However, I remain concerned that a number of bundling and integration scenarios which are permitted under our GPL license are still potentially subject to legal action from Blackboard, which introduces legal and technical complexity for many in our community. Finally, all of this is based on patents which many of us still believe to be invalid, and I expect to see this issue ultimately resolved by the patent re-examination which is now under way by the USPTO.- Martin Dougiamas, Moodle Creator and Lead Developer 2/2/2007