For years the ed tech community has speculated about Google entering the LMS market, including Wave (discontinued, but some key features embedded in other tools), Apps for Education, and even incorrectly with Pearson OpenClass. Each time there is some possibilities, but Google has not shown interest in fully replacing LMS functionality. Google Classroom, announced in […]
Google Introduces Course Builder, an Open Source Project Targeted at MOOCs (but the Real Competitor Might Be Amazon)
Google quietly made an educational technology announcement yesterday about the release of Course Builder, an “open source project” targeted at massive open online courses (MOOCs). This platform follows on the heels of Google’s own MOOC this summer. We should find out more information over the coming months, but here are my initial observations after reading the Research Blog on Google’s […]
Khan Academy Contributes to the Google Art Project
My friends Beth Harris and Steven Zucker, formerly of smARThistory, now of smARThistory at Khan Academy, have announced that they contributed 90 art history videos for the newly launched version 2 of the Google Art Project. This idea, of creating virtual versions of important museums around the globe, complete with high-resolution images of the art, […]
When Large Companies Enter Ed Tech
I had a very interesting conversation on the way home from EDUCAUSE with Frank Florence, who is the Senior Director of Education Market Management for Cisco. We discussed the changes happening in the ed tech market, and Frank helped me understand some of the market forces behind the changes we’re seeing. One topic in particular […]
Mashing Up the LMS the Google Way
I have mentioned before Cambridge’s My Sakai project which, writ large, can be seen as an attempt to make Sakai more compatible with Web 2.0 by supporting development of widgets, gadgets, Facebook applications, and so on. Well, they’ve made some substantial progress of late, inspired in part by the Apache Shindig implementation of Google’s OpenSocial […]
Gadgets Instead of Portlets?
Via CMSWatch, an interesting facet of the Apache Shindig proposal has surfaced. Shindig is Apache’s server-side container for OpenSocial and OpenSocial, in turn, is (among other things) based on Google Gadgets. Here’s the interesting bit: A social application, in this context, is an application run by a third party provider and embedded in a web […]
Google Announces Open(er) Social Software APIs
As many have anticipated, Google has announced its OpenSocial platform, a set of APIs that allow developers to target multiple social software platforms. As you might imagine, there’s already a lot of good coverage of this on the web, and I’m going to just provide some highlights here: From TechCrunch: