Practically every school technology company that attended the annual National Educational Computing Conference last month in Atlanta had something to announce, whether it was a new partnership, a new product, or simply a new price for an old offering.
Still, a few companies stood out. One was bigchalk.com, which offers a wide range of electronic-learning services to schools. The Wayne, Pa.-based company announced that it would become the exclusive provider of Princeton Review’shomeroom.com, an online service designed to improve schools’ performance on high-stakes tests, and that it had formed a partnership with Blackboard Inc., in which Blackboard will provide professional-development resources to bigchalk users.
The week before, bigchalk announced an agreement with National Public Radio in which the company will distribute NPR content and audio online, along with related lesson plans, beginning this fall.
Among other announcements at the June 26-28 conference:
- Atlanta-based NetSchools Corp. has formed a partnership with the online course provider class.com, based in Lincoln, Neb. Users of NetSchools.com, which links instruction and assessment with academic standards, will now have access to class.com’s more than 35 high school courses.
Riverdeep Group PLC, based jointly in Dublin, Ireland, and Cambridge, Mass., will contribute online curriculum materials to AOL@School, a World Wide Web site run by the Dulles, Va.-based Internet service provider, America Online Inc., under a partnership between the two companies. Riverdeep specializes in mathematics, language arts, and science.
•Intel Corp., based in Santa Clara, Calif., unveiled Intel Education Destination, a Web site designed to support teachers in improving their use of technology. (Education Week has a licensing agreement with Intel to provide selected news stories to the site.)
—Erik Fatemi
