As you go thru all the Social Technologies tabs please don’t forget to answer the polls, participate in the discussions and enrich our collective knowledge.

Check out this interesting link that was reported on the cbc tonight (October 6):

Teens too open online: privacy watchdog

Jennifer Stoddart, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, has filed her report that looks at 2008 privacy complaint investigations; technology and privacy issues; and the commissioner’s efforts to encourage the development of international privacy standards.

Watch the Video

Or go to the address below and click on the QuickTime or RealMedia links.

http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2009/10/06/youth-privacy-commissioner.html

Introduction

Lifetime learning is a commitment that must be made to ensure medical professionals remain competent.  To serve this function both at distance and at regional conferences, private ventures and institutions have developed continuing education learning modules.  One such provider in the CMEinfo group. Here are the 6 cubes:

Type of Market Focus

Their training offerings are for the practicing physician, and many of the products are focused on the market of those physicians studying for their specialty boards, an upgrading process.  The market is specifically those physicians who cannot leave their practice to attend live CE sessions. This product is well integrated with the rest of the physician education process due to the number of high profile partners and the extent to which they access continuing education conferences.

www.cmeinfo.com

Type of Product/Offerings

The CME info products include disc-based and live course components that are content focused.  They edit and broadcast conference sessions. The company is now owned by Oakstone Publishing, of Birmingham Alabama. CMEinfo has been providing these educational products since 1989. Many of these products are duplicated onto CD or DVD for distribution. They have partners and provide royalty on sales to them. Abut 26 partner hospitals and large private clinics (Cleveland for example) are showcased.

Global Markets

Though the company is based in the USA, the distribution of the modules is global. There is no information on the website about overseas customers. Because it is not internet based, the content discs could be taken or sent to places where online access is absent or of poor quality. No mention is given of translation so it is probably safe to assume these are English-only products.

Development of the Market

They refer to marketing programs to help promote the conferences they will be taping as well as email, mail, and an online web store to market the discs themselves. Oakstone publishing the parent company is

Learning Technology Competing with Other Forms of Learning

The e-learning venture works with a well developed live learning system of conferences. These programs will compete with live conferences, though the market for learning at distance will always be there physicians still like to combine holidays and conferences so it will not replace this type of venue.  Online learning is provided by the various institutions themselves in the partner list. They also provide online taped conferences at some of the institutions. (see http://cme.hms.harvard.edu and www.med.cornell.edui/education/programs/con_med_edu.html for examples). A master listing of all medical schools CME departments is available at www.aamc.org/meded/cme/offices_medschools.htm

Via the company Practice Solutions, part of CMA company, learning by going on cruises is available and this is another competing venue for LT.

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Food for thought; What the press reported when the initiative started that the international companies are engaged in this program for free, I believe there’s no such free lunch. What’s in it for the big guys is still something to debate and research further.

I was recently introduced to Engrade, as some of the colleagues I’m teaching with are using it with a lot of success.  It is easy to use and very intuitive.  The company, Engrade, is based in San Diego, California, and was founded in 2003 by a team of Internet entrepreneurs.  Engrade is used all over the world today.  Engrade is free and claims to remain free of charge for educators.

Face 1: Market Focus

Engrade seems to be focused for school systems from K-12; or for any company that need to keep track of student records, such as tutoring services, summer camps/courses, or educational services that do not have a required grading system.  Engrade provides services to principals, teachers, parents, and students – all at the same time.

Face 2: Types of Offerings

Engrade provides services to principals, teachers, parents, and students.  Some of these services include updated information of students’ class marks, attendance, work habits, and scheduled tests and exams.

• For teachers, they are able to input grades of student assignments online.  This can be done anywhere with an Internet access (and the password to sign-in).  It is a paperless gradebook.  The teacher can manage several classes, multiple students, and customized weighting and grading systems as well.  In addition, they are able to communicate privately among colleagues.
• For principals, they are able to send messages to teachers at once or individually.
• For parents and students, to check their grades and their information, class marks, missing assignments, work habits, customized feedback from the teacher, etc.

Infrastructure

Engrade also provides some infrastructure in that it manages student and content.

Face 3: Who is the Buyer?

As this service is absolutely free, there is no “buyer” per se, but there are users.  The people who will be logging in to this service are students, parents, teachers, and principals.  So, the buyer would be people related to the K-12 system (or as mentioned earlier, an academic environment  – ex: tutoring company).

There is nothing to download; however, the only thing that participants must “buy” is access to the Internet.  If Internet access is a problem for the student, teachers can also print out specific pages for students to bring home.

Face 4 – Global Markets

Looking at Engrade, I do not see the option for other languages.  Therefore, I assume that this service is for English speakers only – or those who can navigate student names, numbers, and letter grades simply in English.  As our school is located in Beijing, China, it would be only be fair to say that English speakers in Asian Countries with Internet can also benefit from this service.  Basically, Engrade has a global market as long as there is interest.

Face 5 – Development of the Market

The market is among educators around the world (Engrade claims that over 250,000 educators are using this service).  Engrade is continually improving since 2003.

Face 6 – Learning Technology Competing with Other Forms of Learning

Every classroom, regardless of public or private, has some sort of grading system.  Teachers will assess the students’ development in one way or another.  Engrade is an alternative to paper gradebooks, and because its functions are very similar to Integrade Pro (or now, PowerSchool Pro – Pearson Education), it may be in competition with electronic gradebooks that the school or school districts are required to use (such as BCeSIS – which I am, unfortunately, not familiar with).