If you missed yesterday’s webinar “Not Quite Rocket Science: Annotator Tips and Tricks for Math and Science Teachers,” you missed a fruitful conversation and a chance to see the little touches that make graphing and writing equations in Haiku LMS a breeze. You also missed a chance to see what’s coming down the line.

Now for the good news: a recording is available online!

Math and science teachers will find this particularly helpful because, thanks to the excellent work by Tutor Trove, using symbols and annotations directly in Haiku LMS is so simple!

Go to the recording >>

Friday we pulled back the curtain to let you know what’s been happening behind the scenes at Haiku—namely working on resources for the Haiku community.

More Than a Learning Management System

The goal is to get educators who use Haiku into a virtual room where they can talk about what’s on their minds. Naturally, we love when they gush about Haiku—but that’s not the point of the community. Sure, a common denominator is our learning management system, but just like we strive to keep the technology secondary to the teaching and learning experience we’re taking a back seat in the group so that the community drives the conversation.

The group is just getting started, and more people are joining every day. Our vision is that it’ll be a place for educators to share ideas about teaching practices and curriculum, post helpful resources, and ask questions. We’re excited to see what develops!

Now that you have a direct line to other Haiku users, join the conversation! http://groups.google.com/group/haiku-lms

Looking for a reliable comparison of the leading learning management systems by people who’ve actually used them? Wondering whether one system has what another does (and which one does it better) or even what features you’d actually use?

The University of Indianapolis recently evaluated Sakai, Blackboard 9, Haiku LMS, and Moodle and shared their findings in a Point/Counterpoint panel discussion that’s available online.

We’ll tell you right now that we’re pleased with the evaluation — particularly a comment made by an audience member who stressed how easy it is to use Haiku LMS. Fred May, Associate Professor at the university’s School of Nursing, reviewed Haiku LMS. The top benefits he named?

• Simple and compatible with Web 2.0
• Notification and clear display of what’s new in a class
• A gradebook that enables the instructor to write notes-to-student and notes-to-self
• Adding assignments ties directly into the calendar and the gradebook

The panelists touched on the barriers too, and we’ve taken notes on where we can improve Haiku LMS.

See for yourself: Part 1 of 4