>| Case Studies >> Edulink - eLearning

Project: Pushing the Envelope in eLearning

Client
Edulink, a dynamic Internet-based educational service, delivers national standard curriculum to schools and homes for use by teachers, students, parents and administrators as well as home school parents and students.

Business Challenge
To develop a delivery and content management system for the educational market. To accomplish this, Edulink needed to develop and license patented, proprietary technologies that facilitate a sophisticated delivery and communication system.

Zynergy Solution
Zynergy teamed with SAIC to develop a strategic plan and architecture for a comprehensive content communication and information management system to deliver consistent, creative, standards-based curriculum, including an array of integrated learning, assessment and authoring tools. These diverse, intuitive, and easy-to-use tools allow teachers and parents to enhance educational lessons that transform them into exciting, fun, intriguing and interactive experiences.

These tools include:
• Communication Desktops
• Cognitive Mapper
• Crossword Builder
• Integrated Writing Environment
• Teacher, Student, Parent Planner
• 3-D Virtual World Tool
• Chart Maker
• Math Plotter

1. Communication Desktops
The system provides interconnected desktops that facilitate communication between and among teachers, students, parents and school administrators. Encrypted email is a part of the system to retain privacy between and among constituents. All of these communication functions are designed to facilitate collaboration. The desktops are also designed to make life easier for all constituents by providing access to all desired information in one place.

Teacher Desktop

My Profile:
Lists the teacher's physical location, contact information, and professional interests. My profile also provides the teacher with an easy to create and use homepage. This homepage can be used by students and parents to get more acquainted with their teacher.

My Classes:
Helps teachers add classes, accept student registering for these classes and take attendance for each class on a daily basis.

Resource Center:
Provides access to our tools, inclusive of the cognitive mapper, crossword maker, map maker, math plotter, chart makers, atlas, calculator, dictionary, thesaurus and encyclopedia.

Teacher's Lounge:
This will be the central point of professional information for the Learning Priority teachers. Information regarding continuing education and teaching enrichment opportunities will be posted here. National and local education contacts will be available or listed here.

Planner:
The teacher planner is a tool for selecting, or creating materials of instruction which will be delivered by the teacher to students at a particular point in time. The tool includes an objective statement (targeted to teachers and administrators), a description (targeted to the student), associated start and end dates, and a title. Through the planning process the teacher will construct a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly plan on a per class basis. Reuse of a plan for other classes or different years is in an overall goal.

Homework:
Create, assign, grade, and return homework can all be done through this tool. A teacher can assign a Learning Priority homework assignment or edit it to meet his/her class needs. Once the student has completed and submitted the assignment, the teacher will be able to grade the homework and make his/her comment/grade available to the student and their parents.

My Files:
This repository is for class files (accessible by student in the teacher's class) as well as private teacher documents. Keeping files on the Learning Priority system allows teachers to access their files from any computer. Files do not have to be stored on a disk or special software does not have to be installed on their home computer. The class files are templates or informative documents the teacher wants the student to use or read.

Teacher's Lounge:

Reports:
Will produce and archive progress reports to be viewed by students and parents. Many times the process of producing a progress report and getting home to parents is too long. Once the Learning Priority teacher generates their student's progress reports, students and parents will have instant access. The parent and student will be able to react expeditiously to assist in those areas where the student needs remedial work.

Parent Desktop

My Profile:
Lists the parent's physical location, contact information, and professional interests. My profile also provides the parent with an easy to create and use homepage. This homepage can be used by teachers to get more acquainted with the parents of their students.

Resource Center:
Provides access to our tools. The parent has access to the same tools as the student.

Parent's Lounge:
This will be the central point of educational and school information for the Learning Priority parents. Information regarding the parent/teacher association, school events, and volunteer opportunities. National and local education contacts will be available or listed here.

Planner:
In this planner, the parent will be able to see his/her student's school calendar. The lessons or homework assigned due on a certain will be viewable here. The various school sponsored club meeting schedules and test dates will also appear here.

Homework:
Current and previous homework assignments are made available to the parent by this tool. The parent can see these homework assignments by date and click on the title of the homework to receive more detail.

Student Desktop
Includes most of the elements within the Parent Desktop, plus a Student Lounge (personal storage), classes, schedule of activities, extracurricular matters, etc., chat, email.

School Desktop
Includes many of the elements in the Teachers Desktop, plus overall schedules and administrative information.

Extra Tools
Tools such as word processing, spreadsheets, paint/draw software, etc. will also be available to teachers, parents, students and school administrators. Also accessible are chat, encrypted e-mail functionality and our commerce area (the "mall"). Templates and files can remain on the Learning Priority system and are accessible from any computer. Installing software on the home computer is unnecessary.

2. The Cognitive Mapper Tool
The Cognitive Mapper is a tool for the collaborative development of critical analyses. Synthesizing the best approaches of collaborative learning research, Cognitive Mapper provides an intuitive graphical interface for creating diagrams of nodes and links that explore alternative hypotheses and the evidence supporting or refuting such hypotheses.
Several collaborators, whether across the room or around the world, can develop the diagram together by showing on all collaborators' desktops in real time all changes to the diagram no matter which collaborator has made the change. Collaborators may also communicate directly with each other through a built-in chat facility that maintains a private chat among only the collaborators working on a particular diagram.

The Cognitive Mapper also permits the user to view a diagram in one of several modes (graphical, matrix, outline, and container), as he or she prefers, regardless of how the user's co-collaborators are currently viewing the same diagram.
The Cognitive Mapper guides the user through the critical inquiry process through an extensive Inquiry Guide, a How-Do-I? guide, and an intelligent Coach that examines the formal structure of the diagram when called or automatically whenever there is any significant change, and make recommendations for further developing the critical inquiry.

3. The Crossword Builder Tool
The Crossword Builder is a tool designed for a teacher to be able to build a substantial crossword puzzle quickly and conveniently, to be used as a lesson activity or an assessment vehicle. A simple graphical user interface permits the user easily to enter and edit words and clues, and to generate alternative crossword configurations for those words.

The Crossword Builder automatically assigns numbers to the clues and organizes them into sets going across and down. When the user is satisfied with the puzzle words, clues, and configuration, the puzzle can be assigned as an activity or assessment as any other assignment. The Crossword Taker is the "test-taking" companion tool for exercising a crossword puzzle generated by the Crossword Builder.

Through an intuitive interface in which the user simply mouse clicks on an empty crossword puzzle space and types in the answer in response to the clue which appears in a field below, the puzzle can be filled in quickly and easily. Answers can be changed or cleared with the press of a button. When the user (student) is satisfied with his or her answer set, a single button press submits the answer set for grading, after which it can no longer be changed.

4. The Teacher Planner Tool
The Teacher Planner is a tool for selecting, or creating materials of instruction which will be delivered by the teacher to students at a particular point in time. The tool includes an objective statement (targeted to teachers and administrators), a description (targeted to the student), associated start and end dates, and a title. Through the planning process the teacher will construct a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly plan on a per class basis. Reuse of a plan for other classes or different years is in an overall goal.

In the Parent Planner, the parent will be able to see his/her student's school calendar. The lessons or homework assigned due on a certain will be viewable here. The various school sponsored club meeting schedule and test dates will also appear here.

5. 3D World Tool
Learning Priority has created a unique learning opportunity by combining narratives with virtual tours in online environments where historic artifacts are recreated in 3D. The 3D World Tool allows users "free navigation" in the form of guided or self-guided tours.

Users might find themselves in an early 18th century print shop...explore how the press works, join the letterset's workbench, explore the first publications and print their own version of an 18th century gazette.

Other examples include a virtual tour around Boston harbor in the time of the Tea Party, or a tour of the Concord-Lexington battle, where users are immersed into the historical context of the period and can explore the Tea Party and the Concord-Lexington battle in 30 minute intervals. The text is linked to specific historic artifacts reproduced in the computer environment. The program is mapped to national educational standards and incorporates appropriate elements of elements of student learning in a simulated virtual environment.

The 3D World tool sees, hears and has a hands-on experience while solving a real problem.

6. The Chart Maker Tool
The Chart Maker is a tool for creating 0-, 1-, or 2-dimensional multimedia answer templates for entering fill-in-the-blank, short answer, and short essay responses, with associated image files and Internet link references as necessary. The template may be a single chart (0-dimensional) where, for example, the assignment calls for answers to a single set of questions. But it may also be a (1-dimensional) sequence of charts where the answers to the same set of questions is required for different sets of input data, for example, generating a photo archive gallery and using the same descriptive fields for each photo. Similarly, the template may call for a 2-dimensional set of templates, where repetitive questions must be answered in a spatially organized manner, for example, creating a monthly lunar calendar containing similar information about the circumstances of each observation.

The Chart Maker is primarily designed for teachers to create answer templates that can be assigned as activities or assessments, the same as other Learning Priority assignments. However, the Chart Maker is also to be used by a student as a resource tool, for example, in creating a storyboard template to use for storyboarding the individual scenes in a theatrical or motion picture production.

The Chart Player is the companion-answering tool for the templates created by the Chart Maker. Using a common graphical interface for all templates, the user can quickly and conveniently enter answers and add multimedia content to each chart in the set, and when finished, submit the set to the grader. The Chart Player also permits the user to view a chart individually as well as viewing the entire set of charts as a one or two-dimensional collection.

7. The Math Plotter Tool
The Edulink Math Plotter is a resource tool for teachers and students for generating graphical plots of mathematical functions.

An intuitive interface permits the user to enter a function as one would write it and to specify the desired input range. The Math Plotter automatically parses the input expression, computes the function values, and scales the output for the most informative display.

The Math Plotter supports arithmetic, trigonometric, and exponential operators. The plots of multiple functions can be overplayed on the output display and Math Plotter maintains a library of each user's favorite functions.

Technology Profile:
Zynergy used XML, XSL, and JAVA for programming. 3D Studio Max, Macromedia Suite and Adobe Suite for site design, Microsoft Visio for site architecture, Perforce and Microsoft Project for project management, an Oracle database was used for all content and asset storage.