Forum LAMS Newsletter: Newsletter 83, 20th Dec, 09

By: James Dalziel

[ Forward ]

4th International LAMS Conference Wrap-up

We had another fantastic gathering at the 4th International LAMS and Learning Design Conference in Sydney on December 4th. Over 80 attendees from thirteen countries enjoyed great presentations on LAMS from school, university, medical and training perspectives. A special thank you to all the presenters - including the 11 year olds who spoke at the "Student Authored Designs" session!

In keeping with past conferences, we will be adding the slides and audio recordings (where possible) to the Program area of the conference website - coming soon.

There were four significant announcements at the conference (more information in the Media Release at the end):

- A new LAMS International partner for Italy - “LAMSITALIA aulavirtuale.it”, led by Professor Edoardo Monefusco.

- A new LAMS International Product - the LAMS Activity Planner - which is a new software system (not OSS) that runs above the LAMS software to provide pre-built templates containing effective teaching strategies.

- A new collaboration with Civica Library and Learning - as the first licensee for the LAMS Activity Planner, and Civica will be contributing towards the development of open source LAMS.

- Another new LAMS International Product - LessonLAMS - a "cloud-style" hosting service for LAMS that provides one free class (up to 30 students) for LAMS, as well as access to the Activity Planner.

We look forward to your feedback on the new products - widespread availability is planned for early 2010.


2010 European LAMS Conference Announcement - Mid July at Oxford University

I'm pleased to say that we're planning another European LAMS Conference for 2010 - we expect it to be in mid July at Oxford University. My great thanks to Liz Masterman and colleagues at Oxford for their willingness to assist us with arranging this conference.

We'll have more details in the near future including specific dates and a website. We also hope to co-host another Design Bash with CETIS (probably the day after the conference in the same location), as well as potential training workshops and discussion of Pedagogic Planners - more details in the new year.


Christmas and New Year Wishes

On behalf of all the LAMS team, our very best wishes for Christmas and the New Year. I have a sense that 2010 will be a big year for LAMS...


Media Release

LAMS International announces new Partners and Products

4 December 2008, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Today at the 4th International LAMS and Learning Design Conference held at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, Professor James Dalziel from LAMS International Pty Ltd announced a new Partner in Italy and a collaboration with Civia Library and Learning, as well as two new products: the LAMS Activity Planner and LessonLAMS.

The new Partner in Italy is “LAMSITALIA aulavirtuale.it”, led by Professor Edoardo Montefusco. “After working with LAMS in Italy for several years, we are delighted to become the official Italian Partner for LAMS International. We see great potential for LAMS in Italy, both for schools and for universities. In particular, High School teaching needs personalised curricula, with a flow of structured tasks including those of a collaborative nature. Personalised curricula in e-learning are very useful for the educational activities of support and recovery,” said Professor Edoardo Montefusco, “Concerning primary school, every year there is an exponential increase in children who are not native speakers of Italian: for these students we must identify individual teaching strategies and solutions that can support the teachers' and cultural mediators' work."

Two new products were announced at the conference. The first is the LAMS Activity Planner, a new software system that runs above the LAMS software to provide pre-built templates containing effective teaching strategies. The Activity Planner also provides advice on editing and adapting templates to local student needs. The Activity Planner will be licensed as traditional commercial software (rather than as open source software) for institutions to extend the breadth and effectiveness of their use of LAMS. The Activity Planner will be provided at no cost to existing LAMS International Gold Support/Large Hosting clients during 2010. Individual access to the Activity Planner will be available at no cost through the new LessonLAMS site. The main LAMS software itself will continue to be freely available as open source software.

Complementing the release of the Activity Planner was the announcement of the first major licensee of the new system - Civica Library and Learning. Civica will be implementing the Activity Planner with existing educational clients, and also will contribute to the ongoing development of open source LAMS. During the conference, Glenn Moloney from Civica spoke about the benefits of the new features of the Activity Planner and plans for its use with Civica clients. James Dalziel welcomed the new collaboration with Civica and praised Civica’s contribution towards the ongoing development of open source LAMS.

The second product is a new hosting service called “LessonLAMS” that allows educators to gain free access to LAMS (including the Activity Planner) to use with a class of up to 30 students. LessonLAMS provides new interfaces to simply the process of creating and launching LAMS lessons with a class. LessonLAMS provides a free “Cloud-style” service for educators to get started with using LAMS in a matter of minutes. A Premium version of LessonLAMS for more than one class or more than 30 students will be available in the near future for a modest fee.

The LAMS Activity Planner and LessonLAMS will be available for widespread use in early 2010.

Contact: James Dalziel – james@lamsinternational.com

Posted by James Dalziel