‘New York Times’ Enters Distance Learning Market

Pues eso, The New York Times Company en el mercado de la educación…
1) The New York Times Introduces an Online Complement to College and University Courses, Providing Enhanced Classroom and Distance Learning

The Times Will Work with Epsilen(TM), a Web-based System that Provides Tools and Services to Students and Faculty

NEW YORK, Sep 06, 2007 (BUSINESS WIRE) — The New York Times introduced today a new online initiative that pairs Times content with faculty course material for both credit-bearing and continuing education courses. Educators will now have the opportunity to select Times articles, archival content, graphics and multimedia content, including videos and Webcasts, gathered around specific subjects, and make them available to students online, along with other course materials. Students will benefit from access to thematic content that is drawn from the vast array of Times reporting on a countless number of issues…

A destacar:

«This new component of Knowledge Network is available via the Epsilen(TM) Environment (www.epsilen.com), a newly developed Web-based software package that provides a wide range of tools and services for faculty members and students, including ePortfolios, Global Learning System (courseware), group collaboration, object sharing, blogs, messaging, and social and professional networking. Users receive a lifelong identity on the Epsilen(TM) system, enabling them to maintain their academic and professional ePortfolios throughout their careers, regardless of their affiliation with individual institutions. The New York Times Company is an equity investor in BehNeem, LLC, a company that has secured a long-term exclusive license to the Epsilen(TM) Environment from the Indiana University Research and Technology Corporation.»

2) Tenéis también la noticia en Inside Higher Ed: «New York Times’ Enters Distance Learning Market»

The New York Times on Thursday announced a major push into higher education — with new efforts to provide distance education, course content and social networking. A number of colleges are already either committed to using the new technologies or are in negotiations to start doing so, evidence of the strong power of the Times brand in academe

If successful, the enterprises could help some colleges start or expand distance education and might provide professors and students with information that might replace the need for some textbooks or course materials, college officials say.

Fuente: [new york times y Inside Higher Ed]

The Ultimate Distance Learning. CHRISTINE LAGORIO

A Harvard Law School lecture in Second Life. More Photos >

By CHRISTINE LAGORIO

Isaac Greenbaum, a continuing education student at New York University, remembers the day last semester when his media studies class was settling into a discussion of its next group project. Shortly after class began, a brawny, bare-chested figure bounded in wielding a crossbow.

«This guy is shooting arrows, and if he hits you — of course, you can’t die — you get teleported to a different land. And he hit me! I got sent to, like, the Himalayas!”

Sabotage can happen when your class is held in cyberspace, where a marauding avatar may just barge in and audit. Avatars are the virtual personas that users design and embellish (with anything from wings to, well, crossbows) to navigate the digital three-dimensional world called Second Life. Much of Second Life, now occupied by some two million users, mimics real life (R.L., in the vernacular): sun, sky, trees, waterways and anything users think to build. Were avatars the size of their human creators, the Second Life “grid” — a mainland and surrounding islands that users can buy with real money — would be the equivalent of more than 100 square miles. (Enter at www.secondlife.com.)

Scores of colleges and universities have set up campuses on islands, where classes meet and students interact in real time. They can hold chat discussions and create multimedia presentations from virtual building blocks called prims. The laws of physics don’t necessarily apply.(leer más…)

Fuente: [the new york times]

tags: e-learning, aprendizaje, web2.0, Second Life, web 2.0