The Problem:

The Solution: EduTechnica.com provides a free plugin for learning management systems that collects aggregated and anonymous data directly from the LMS systems. By using our plugin, administrators can find ways to optimize their systems, provide cost justifications, analyze usage trends, and compare all of this to the rest of the industry. Industry-wide trends can quickly become visible out of what used to be only guessed at or assumed. Trends can be shared using the integrated social networking site and sharing of best practices can be easily facilitated.

The Technology: The plugins are built using various technologies based on the LMS system. The backend for data collection is a Java-based application and the data presentation layer uses PHP, MySQL, and Javascript. Custom pCharts classes and SocialEngine provide the framework.

Visit www.edutechnica.com

Seeing as how we run a Java-based application, we need the Tomcat support. So, our site is now hosted by Rackspace using their Cloud Servers. It’s similar to the type of account we had before with WestHost, but we now have much more flexibility in the server configuration and can quickly scale as necessary.

In addition to now being hosted in the cloud, we migrated our email over to Google’s “Apps for Your Domain” which basically allows us to use GMail, Google Docs, GCal, etc within our domain. I personally love this since the POP3 support on my Droid seems to be spotty at best but it interfaces seamlessly with GMail accounts. So now we have awesome web-based email, integration with my phone, private chat options, and Postini spam filter. I’ll also be moving all of my other domains to Google Apps in the coming weeks.

So now that the hosting has been reestablished, the databases have been migrated, and SocialEngine has been set up again, it’s time to get into the pCharts and tie it all together. Expect closed beta testing to commence soon.