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1EdTech Announces Winners of the 2014 Connected Learning App Challenge

1EdTech Announces Winners of the 2014 Connected Learning App Challenge

 

Inaugural Connected Learning Innovation App Challenge gives recognition to next wave of digital innovation based on open standards to enable connected learning

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Lake Mary, Florida, USA –14 April 2014 – 1EdTech Consortium (1EdTech / 1EdTech) today announced the winners of the inaugural 1EdTech Connected Learning Innovation App Challenge. Out of 22 total submissions, five innovative apps emerged as the winners for their creativity, ease of integration enabled by the adoption of the Learning Tools Interoperability™ (LTI™) specification, and potential for enabling connected learning in the classroom and online.  Each of the winners will receive a $1000 prize and will be recognized during the 2014 Learning Impact Leadership Institute, May 5-8 in New Orleans.  The top five winners are:

  • 1st Place: Hoot.Me
    An educational question and answer platform designed to simultaneously connect Facebook, where students are, with Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as Canvas and Blackboard, where instructors live, so that discussion can be facilitated transparently across systems.
  • 2nd Place: SoftChalk Cloud
    A fast, easy, and flexible way to create and manage e-learning content for delivery inside or outside of a LMS, allowing educators to create their own engaging, interactive, media-rich learning content accessible anywhere, anytime.
  • 3rd Place: LeaP – Learning Path
    A course tool that gives LMS users the power of adaptive learning by retrieving and mapping learning objectives and content from any repository and combining it with student assessment data to create personalized adaptive learning paths.
  • 4th Place: QuestionPress
    Offers live web-based classroom response, assessments, surveys, and polling to any web capable device, allowing users to embed QuestionPress directly into the LMS and pass scores from QuestionPress back up to the LMS grade book.
  • 5th Place: VoiceThread
    A communications platform for hosting secure discussions of digital media that are richly interactive, allowing collaboration between students and instructors individually or in groups.

Through the adoption of LTI, these applications can easily integrate into any of the 25+ learning management platforms that are conformance certified to 1EdTech standards.  The resulting benefit for institutions is a 10-1000x improvement in the time and cost to integrate than is the case with integrating closed, proprietary applications.


"LTI has been tremendously impactful at driving adoption for us. Some of our best engagement is driven by teachers who make Hoot.Me a part of their classrooms via LTI. For us, LTI is huge in tying Facebook, where the students are, back to the LMS, where the teachers are, and that’s been a critical part of our story! LTI enables the LMS to become a true platform, which is powerful because the LMS can focus on what it does best while empowering innovation in often overlooked parts of the classroom,” said Michael Koetting, Co-founder of Hoot.Me.


“1EdTech launched the app challenge last October as part of the Connected Learning Innovation Community to encourage the development of innovative, open educational apps, platforms, and tools,” said Rob Abel, CEO of 1EdTech. “We couldn’t be more pleased to recognize these winners who are fostering a new connected learning mindset in the development educational applications, platforms, and content.” 


Expert evaluators for app challenge included Craig Schroer, University of West Georgia; Christopher Sessums, An Estuary; Jeff Bohrer, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Jessie Schreier, Brown University; Jim Twetten, Iowa State University; Julie Lirot, Brown University; Liz Pisney, Follett; Rick Johnson, Vital Source, Inc.; and Scott Miller, Brown University who volunteered their time and expertise to serve on the Evaluator Committee. 


Also worthy of recognition are the organizations that provided support for the Connected Learning App Challenge, including Cengage Learning, Ellucian, Follett, Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne, Instructure Canvas, McGraw-Hill Education, Oracle, Pearson, University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Vital Source.


About 1EdTech Consortium (1EdTech)
1EdTech is a nonprofit organization that advances technology that can affordably scale and improve educational participation and attainment. 1EdTech members are leading suppliers, institutions and government organizations that are enabling the future of education by collaborating on interoperability and adoption initiatives. 1EdTech sponsors Learning Impact: A global awards program and conference to recognize the impact of innovative technology on educational access, affordability, and quality.