myNGconnect

Summary

myNGconnect is an immersive ubiquitous LMS with the flexibility to support multi-state US adoptions and the ability to integrate old content mediums into new forms of distribution.

Details

National Geographic School Publishing (NGSP) is the education division within the National Geographic Publishing. This group works as a shared service across the education assets throughout the larger enterprise. It is considered a mid-sized company currently focused on the US preK-12 market. NGSP Has survived in a very competitive market through innovative products and solutions, rather than the ability to offer deep discounts traditionally offered in basal publishing. This is due to NGSP’s commitment to innovative, pedagogically aligned products that defy commoditization and offer the education value proposition necessary to continue warranting customer commitment. The myNGconnected LMS continued this commitment to learner and educator-focused innovation coupled with industry leading and forward-looking technology components that augment and improve instruction.

The goal of the system was to build a Netcentric environment that is lightweight, yet fully featured, extensible, interoperable, focused on the English learner, and enabling the struggling reader. To achieve this goal the composite team of NGSP and Idhasoft staff created a set of modular services that when aggregated, delivered a comprehensive education platform enabling learner and educators in a seamless Netcentric environment. Focusing on the business drivers facing the ELL/ELA publishing group the tools developed ensured the K5 basal alternative developed by NGSP had the components necessary to ensure tha English learners, struggling readers and the norm population were equally supported with a seamless technical solution (K5 ELL Delivery System) that supported and aligned to the print products.

The solution was not product dependent and could be offered as a shared service or set of modular utilities across the NGSP product suite(s), functionally acting as a delivery engine rather than a product tightly coupled to content. Key to this initiative was the use of technology as differentiator between NGSP and other publishers; each component of this suite of tools and technical elements aligned to the pedagogical flow identified by NGSP in the creation of its next generation K5 ELL/ELA product. This suite also leveraged the existing paradigm NGSP adopters had come to recognize as key elements of their education programs, these include; Online Planner, Coach, Writing Tools and Student and Teacher eEditions. Additional tools and utilities were created to ensure market parity was retained but also surpassed the competition by ensuring the tools natively integrated into the technical portfolio of the customers, and when little technical infrastructure is supplied NGSP can offer comprehensive and complimentary solutions.

Technology Stack

ActiveMQ, Apache HTTP, Apache Jackrabbit, Apache Lucene, Apache POI, Apache Tomcat, Apache Velocity, BlazeDS, CentOS, CFX, CMU Sphinx, CSS, Flashpaper, Flex (MXML, ActionScript), Flex components, Flex Unit, Flexmojos, Hibernate, HTML, J2EE, Javascript, JCR, JUnit, Mate Flex framework, Maven, Media player, MySQL, OpenSSH, OpenSSL, Red5 (for Comp Coach), Rsync, Spring framework, Subversion

My Role

  • Design
  • Flows and Navigational Maps
  • Information Architecture
  • Prototyping
  • Scenario Writing
  • Screen Casting
  • User Story Development
  • Visual Design
  • Wireframing