For Education
e.magination designs and delivers solutions for education instututions and education-related organizations that enhance the effectiveness of educators, administrators, and education-related agencies.
Thinkport Education Portal
Teacher-centric Portal
Background
Maryland Public Television (MPT) is a not-for-profit, state-licensed public television station which serves the citizens and communities of Maryland through a variety of broadcast and non-broadcast activities. MPT creates instructional materials that serve tens of thousands of students, teachers, and child care providers statewide.
Business Problem
MPT, in partnership with Johns Hopkins University Center for Technology in Education (JHU-CTE), received a multi-million dollar Star Schools Grant from the United States Department of Education to promote the use of technology in teaching and learning in Maryland.
MPT had produced an educational website, which was widely used by more than 62,000 teachers the State. The site was largely static, and housed several multimedia-based learning activities. JHU-CTE had developed several online learning and professional development tools including the Electronic Learning Community and Electronic Portfolio, which provides easy-to-use online collaboration tools for educators.
Business Solution
Before making a decision, MPT recognized its need to initiate a comprehensive requirements analysis. This analysis, conducted by e.magination, determined the need for a solution that incorporated a robust portal architecture, content management functionality, content personalization, and a standards-based content repository which would contain the thousands of educational resources to be offered.
With a custom solution based on the Microsoft .NET framework, MPT increased its agility to deploy, update, and maintain dynamic web site content, as well as integrate with the tools already created by JHU-CTE. The system’s workflow engine was extended to allow teachers to submit their work artifacts for review and inclusion into the thinkport.org public content repository. The system also enabled MPT to incorporate the content of other providers including the thousands of lesson plans published on Public Broadcasting System’s TeacherSource website.
Results/Benefits
Using Microsoft .NET connected software, e.magination developed the Thinkport solution (www.thinkport.org) that allows MPT to maintain the site through a custom content management system specifically designed for the purpose. The site’s educational content can be personalized, rated, reviewed, and shared with other Internet sites. Thinkport provides collaborative tools for teachers, students and other community members.