Multimedia Learning Management/Delivery System

The Client - owns more than 2,500 programs and 30,000 teaching segments. Content has been created by educators especially for the classroom that has all been carefully correlated to meet state and national educational standards.

The Application - The Classroom Content system is an intuitive web based platform that delivers the content mentioned above and provides multitude of capabilities to administrators, teachers and students. The system is shipped as a server appliance and can also be deployed in an ASP model. It is compatible with IE and FireFox on Windows and with Safari on Mac. The system was built from from the ground up - Requirements to Integration Testing - using SoftStar's Methodology and Global Delivery Model.

Key system features include:

• Content Playback – Video, Audio, Flash. Near DVD quality video playback. Ability to play specific chapter, rewind, pause and play content in full screen.
• Content Management - New Program creation, uploading of content, defining content chapters and creation of associated student multiple choice assessment
• Search – Users can search based on curriculum, subject, grade, keywords and standards. Sorting on relevance, content type, etc.
• Playlist – Users can create and manage multiple playlists. Allows mixing of various programs.
• Content download – Automatic transcoding of content allows a user to export content.
• Image capture of Video during playback – A snapshot can be captured as an image during playback of a video for inclusion in presentations and homework assignments.
• Video and Audio bookmarks – Ability to create and manage bookmarks including book marking specific points in a program.
• Live Events – Ability to view live events that are being broadcasted by the school.
• User defined restriction to content – Authorized users can make any content they deem inappropriate for their installation, invisible.
• Classrooms – Administrators and teachers can create classrooms and assign students to these classrooms.
• Assessments – Teachers can create and give assessments to students. Assessments are automatically graded and teachers can run various assessments reports.
• Recently Accessed Content - Automated feature that keeps track of last 10 items a user has accessed.
• User Management – Admin can manage users and roles either in the internal database or using LDAP from external systems.
• LDAP compatible – System can use either its own internal database for users and groups or it can authenticate users and retrieve group information from an external directory server via LDAP.
• System management - Administrators can perform various system management tasks including archiving, shutdown and warm reboot.
• Reports – System provides usage and activity reports.
• ITunes and External System Integration – External systems can inquire system for various search criteria. System provides search criteria values through XML and search results through RSS.

The Methodolodgy - Consistent with SoftStar's Global Delivery Model, the Define phase and initial Technical Architecture phase – including database design – were performed by the US team. Detailed design and programming were performed offshore to reduce costs. Total project effort by both teams exceeds 2.75 person years.

Technologies and Tools - consists of Java, AJAX, Struts, Hibernate, DOMAPIs, Darwin Media server, Linux, JBoss and MySQL database. Linux and MySQL were chosen by the client to minimize server appliance cost, preserve the flexibility to operate on a Linux platform and develop using an “industry standard” platform.