By using best of breed technology like Alfresco and Liferay combined with our knowledgeable development partner, TSG, we are able to enrich the lives of children and adults with disabilities and provide teachers with the resources they need.
Providing Technology Solutions for “Life without Limits for People with Disabilities”
TSG has had a longstanding relationship with United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Chicago, donating services to build content-centric solutions that help UCP further their goal of “life without limits for people with disabilities.”
TSG collaborated with Alfresco to create a case study showcasing the value of the Alfresco platform and how it has benefited UCP. At Alfresco DevCon 2011, TSG had the opportunity to present our work with UCP that leverages both Alfresco and Liferay. View the presentation “Assisting Special Needs Children with the Power of Open Source!” on Slideshare.
Check out the following video to learn more about the case study!
Our work with UCP was recently recognized by ABC 7 Chicago in a story that aired in January 2012.
InfiniTEXT
InfiniTEXT is a repository of digital textbooks that allows students with disabilities that hinder their ability to read or hold books access to content they would otherwise be unable to access.
The current Alfresco repository, deployed on Amazon EC2, has over 11,000 files, each containing all or part of a K-12 textbook store in or more of five formats, including PDF, MP3, TXT, RTF and KES (a proprietary format compatible with a popular educational software program). Since its launch, the InfiniTEXT platform has expanded beyond its initial pilot of suburban Chicago schools and now serves more than 500 school districts in five states. Each month thousands of files are downloaded and provided to students who otherwise would not have access to the curriculum.
myInfinitec
UCP has an extensive library containing thousands of digital learning objects (documents, videos and other media) that are used to instruct teachers and provide them with important teaching resources. UCP needed to improve the management of this content and make it more accessible to its community of 20,000+ K-12 teachers. Previously content was presented on a complex set of static HTML pages, which were difficult for users to navigate and expensive to manage. UCP’s recent implementation of the Adobe Connect platform, used to stream its library of training videos and presentations, prompted the organization to redesign its web portal. In addition, UCP wanted to create a collaborative community within its user base, which could not be easily accomplished with the old environment. UCP needed a web content management system that was easy to integrate with Adobe Connect, included social collaboration tools, and was scalable to meet the organization’s planned expansion.
UCP is leveraging Alfresco as the content repository for the newly designed myInfinitec.org web portal which uses Liferay Portal for the front end and user management. The portal integrates with Adobe Connect for managing and streaming on-demand eLearning modules. The combined Alfresco/Liferay/Adobe environment provides an interactive user experience and access to the thousands of digital learning objects for educators. The platform also handles the administration of online exams for teachers, printing certificates of completion, as well as an active online calendar of meetings and training events across five states.
