World Innovation Summit for Education recognizes Connexions as leader in education

(September 27, 2011) – Rice University’s Connexions project has been recognized as a leader in education by the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), an initiative of the Qatar Foundation.

Connexions, a popular online education site that attracts nearly 2 million visits per month, was chosen from hundreds of projects as one of the six 2011 WISE Award winners.

The annual WISE Awards are designed to identify, showcase, and promote innovative educational projects from around the world with the goal to spread best practices and build the future of education. The theme of this year’s WISE Awards is “Transforming Education: Investment, Innovation, and Inclusion.”

Connexions is an open education initiative founded in 1999 by Richard Baraniuk, the Victor E. Cameron Professor of Electrical Engineering at Rice University. Connexions is a global repository of small “Lego-block” like modules. Modules can be used and reused to create customized learning materials like e-textbooks and courses. Connexions currently houses nearly 20,000 modules organized into over 1,100 free courses that are available for free online and at a very low-cost in print.

Click here to link to the press release!

Mobile CNX.ORG Updated

The mobile version of Connexions has been enhanced to improve content display on smartphones.  The site has a slightly different look that fits the screen size of a smartphone.

The Table of Contents for Collections has also been modified to allow sections to be opened and closed to reduce the amount of scrolling needed.  The new Table of Contents is displayed in the screenshot on the right.

Feature Phone (non-smartphone) users will also notice a smaller Connexions header which allows more content to be displayed "above the fold".  This puts more text on the screen which is important on a small screen size.

These enhancements were funded by the College Open Textbooks project and we are thankful for their support.  You can see the changes by visiting m.cnx.org, mobile.cnx.org or by clicking the link at the top of this post.

Take Notes in Connexions for Android

Now you can take notes on the go as you read your favorite Connexions content in the Connexions for Android app.  Just select the "Add Note" menu item and a note editor will open.  Notes can be exported as a text file to your phone's SDCard or memory so you can move your notes off your phone.  There are also some bug fixes in this release.

The app can be found in the Android Market and on the Connexions site.  If you use the app, please send us some feedback at techsupport at cnx.org.  We would love to hear from you.