Showing posts with label course management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label course management. Show all posts

OpenClass - Pearson and Google combine to make free LMS

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OpenClass is a free Learning Management System (LMS) from Pearson and Google that combines course management tools with social networking and community tools. Educators can import any material they want into the system. It is available through Google Apps for Education and hosted by Pearson. It is free, easy to use, and powerful.

LMS are a great way for educators to organize their course materials and share with students, communicate and interact with students and parents, and even run online courses.



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5 Great course management resources for educators

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There are a lot of course management tools available for educators, including Blackboard and PowerSchool, that allow educators to do attendance, grading, post and organize resources and lessons, and interact with students. Many of them cost money. Moodle is free, but you have to pay to host it somewhere, or host it yourself. There are some great, free alternatives available. Here's a list, in no particular order.



Engrade - Engrade is a web-based, free gradebook that is very powerful, full featured, and easy to use. I used it for many years until our school got a new SIS with an integrated gradebook. Students and parents can even have view access to see their grades at any time. It's even expanded with more features. In addition to the gradebook and attendance, you can create online quizzes that self grade, message students, set up flashcards, wikis, discussion groups, and more.





Schoology -Schoology is a free course management system for educators that allows them to manage their lessons, post resources and assignments, create quizzes, link to additional resources, conduct online courses, provide one-on-one help sessions and host discussions.




Edmodo - Edmodo is a tool that many teachers already use and more are discovering every day. Edmodo is a free social learning network for teachers, students and schools, providing a way to connect and collaborate, share content, access homework and grades, and much more.





My Big Campus -  My Big Campus allows schools and teachers to create a virtual classroom to use with their students. There is a resource library with videos, web sites, wiki’s and more. You can create groups and blogs and use the messaging system. Teachers can create a classroom calendar and even create, assign, and grade student assignments. The teacher can keep up with what the students are doing through the notification system too. Teachers can upload files to share with their students.





Coursekit - Coursekit combines a variety of tools for educators to use for extending their classroom or even creating an online course. Discussion groups, assignments with grading, resource sharing, a class calendar, and a community forum are just some of the tools available. Educators can post links, videos, and other files, hold online discussions, and even write a blog post.




You can also use Blogs, Web sites, and Wiki's to organize and share lesson materials, have discussions, and create assignments. My district uses PowerSchool for attendance and gradebook, but I use classroom blogs, a class website, and Google resources to share resources, post information, and communicate with my students.



What course management system do you use? Why do you like/dislike it? What would be your perfect course management system?




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Learnboost announces student/parent access upgrade

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LearnBoost is an online grade book and lesson planner that is available for free to educators. It has a grade book, lesson planner, attendance, reporting and calendar. It is easy to use, visually appealing, and you can share information with students and parents. The lesson planner is integrated with state standards and you integrate the whole system with Google Apps.


It is an excellent product and they have just announced a nice upgrade. Parent and Student access to view grades online have been updated. It is now easier to grant access to them to view grades, attendance, calendars and course information. The process is very simple to do.

To read the whole release and information go to their article: http://blog.learnboost.com/blog/view-grades-online-parent-student-access-update/

LearnBoost is a great alternative to paying for course management and gradebook systems. 

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Schoology - manage lessons, engage students, share content, and connect with other educators

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Schoology is a free course management system for educators that allows them to manage their lessons, post resources and assignments, create quizzes, link to additional resources, conduct online courses, provide one-on-one help sessions and host discussions.

It allows educators to connect and engage their students, parents, and other educators. You can create lessons with a variety of media and content, organize them as needed,

You can connect and import from Google Docs, Khan Academy, Blackboard, Moodle and Examview so you can use all these resources in your Schoology account. You can also create online discussions, link to other resources, search for resources other teachers have posted, create and automatically assess online quizzes and track user data.



It's a very powerful tool that can help teachers create and organize lesson materials and connect with their students.


There is a premium version for schools and districts that adds additional enterprise type features.

Related services: Blackboard, Edmodo, Moodle, My Big Campus, it's Learning, CourseKit, and LearnBoost.


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Coursekit - free "social" course management system

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Coursekit is a free course management system (similar to Blackboard or Moodle) that is described as being more "social". It was developed by recent graduates who wanted to change how students and instructors interacted outside of the classroom. It has already gotten some rave reviews and is being used by thousands of instructors and students already.

Coursekit combines a variety of tools for educators to use for extending their classroom or even creating an online course. Discussion groups, assignments with grading, resource sharing, a class calendar, and a community forum are just some of the tools available. Educators can post links, videos, and other files, hold online discussions, and even write a blog post.

It's one more tool educators can use to connect with their students outside of the classroom.




Related:

LearnBoost - free online grade book and lesson planner and more
MyBigCampus - course management system - follow my year long review of it on Tech&Learning.


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it's learning Course Management System

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It's very rare that I review apps and services that are not free. However, I found out about it's learning last month and was able to see a demo and I really liked it as a course management system.

it's learning is a web-based system containing course management tools that enable students and teachers to create multimedia learning experiences. You can create your own content or merge free and commercial content into the library.

You start with a dashboard that contains links to your courses, calendar, tasks, messages and more. The system is easy to navigate and quite intuitive.

Features include: course listings, project management, calendar, messaging, ePortfolio's, a library of lesson plans, full search, a community forum, tasks, blogs, built-in audio and video recorders, plagiarism control and much more.

Pricing is based on an annual license for each student and teacher,
typically ranging between $10 - $15 per user/year. Parent and mentor
accounts are free.

it's learning is a very good alternative to other course management systems like Blackboard or Moodle. I found it to be easier to navigate and use also.

(disclaimer - I was not paid for this review and have received nothing from it's learning for the review)



Below is a full list of features and descriptions from their site:


it’s learning is a user-friendly and flexible learning platform that can be used for:

§ Communication and cooperation

§ Administration, reporting and evaluation

§ Production and management of learning resources

it’s learning is not adapted in any specific pedagogical direction. We supply the tools that are used to build up courses, while the teachers and schools fill the learning platform with content. it’s learning supports learning activity, new learning forms and simple access to knowledge. We support standardised e-learning standards such as AICC, IMS and SCORM.

User-friendliness is an important factor for successfully implementing a learning platform, whether in private or the public sector, or in an educational institution. Even if different e-learning systems often seem to include the same functions and tools, it is the intuitiveness of the user interface that in practice decides if the learning platform is actually used. When our customers choose it’s learning, it is most often because of the user-friendliness.

Communication and cooperation

it’s learning has a number of built-in learning tools. The application can easily be set up so that only parts of these tools are made available for the users of the learning platform. This is an arena in which the participants cooperate, both synchronously and asynchronously. Available tools for communication and cooperation are, for example: the internal message system, e-mail, discussions,process-oriented documents, bulletin boards and news services.

Administration, reporting and evaluation

it’s learning is also an administrative tool, both for system administrators, course administrators and teachers. The idea behind the learning platform is that the teachers themselves have the flexibility to choose their own methodology in their educational work. Teachers are not dependent on a superior administrator to set up and administrate their learners and content resources. Reports are automatically generated providing overviews of the learning process, either of a single learner or that of a group. it’s learning also supports assessment portfolio evaluation, and provides possibilities for individual follow-up and reflection.

Production and management of learning resources

it’s learning is a powerful tool for production, organisation, updating and re-use of learning resources. We allow both internal and external tools for producing content.

Our users are interested in content production. By using the Add function in it’s learning, you can access about 15 different tools that allow you to add your own learning tools and organise them within a subject. You can organise course content in many different ways, for example, thematically, chronologically and functionally. For the more advanced users we recommend the additional module Library. The Library allows teachers to create and share lessons. Our customers can also make their own learning tools by means of the proxy tool function.



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