Claroline, an Open Source e-learning software developed by several schools and universities in Belgium, Spain, Canada and Chile, was awarded a Unesco award on October 1.
The software won the 2007 Unesco King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize for making the best use of ICT in education.
Claroline is written in the Open Source programming language PHP and uses the Open Source database system MySQL. It enables teachers to create on-line courses, prepare on-line exercises, manage groups of students and courses and deadlines and track individual user activities.
Development of this Open Source application began in 2004 at the Catholic University of Louvain and Haute Ecole Léonard de Vinci in Belgium. It is now also developed at the Universidade de Vigo in Spain, Université du Québec à Rimouski, Canada, and the Universidad Católica del Norte in Chile. The software has been translated into 35 languages and, according to the project's web site, is used by hundreds of organisations in some 86 countries.
Versions of the software are available for install on host computers running either Windows or GNU/Linux or Mac OS X. The application requires MySQL and the project group recommends the Open Source web server Apache.
The Unesco prize, a certificate and 25,000 US dollar, will be awarded in a ceremony at the Unesco headquarter in Paris on 19 December.
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