Welcome to Castle Rock Research India.

India´s second RubyConf is happening in Bangalore in May 2011. RubyConf India is presented by the Ruby Community in India and supported by RubyCentral and the Innovation & Technology Trust.

The Ruby Community in India, together with the Innovation & Technology Trust, is pleased to announce RubyConf India 2011 on May 28 and 29 at the Royal Orchid Hotel, Bangalore. Targeted at Ruby practitioners and anyone remotely interested or curious about Ruby, it will offer Ruby enthusiasts an opportunity to brainstorm, network, and learn about the latest technology changes first-hand.

As the second RubyConf to be hosted in India, this two-day event will feature prominent speakers like Chad Fowler, author of “The Passionate Programmer,” and Ola Bini, core-committer to JRuby since 2006.

Ruby is an OS dynamic language that offers an ideal development environment for Agile practitioners. It has one of the most active open-source communities worldwide, which produces and supports tools and projects like “Ruby on Rails,” a powerful web application development framework that works well on different platforms and significantly reduces time-to-market and operating costs.

A strong supporter of emerging OS technologies that promise to revolutionize the IT landscape, ThoughtWorks is the Platinum and Technology Sponsor for this event and is supported by Ruby Central, an international non-profit dedicated to the advocacy of the Ruby programming language across the globe.

For more information

A new educational service from Edmonton-based Castle Rock Research Corp. provides secondary students in Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario access to curriculum-based resources via Web browsers and apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad called Solaro, the subscription-based service provides lessons, tests, and assessments in math, science, English, chemistry, biology, and physics. The content, developed by a team of educators at Castle Rock, aligns with regional curriculum requirements for Grades 6–12.

Students access Solaro by logging in to a personal home page and are represented by an avatar in the system. “One of the approaches we´ve taken to make Solaro safe for students is to try to make them as anonymous as possible,” said Mark Madsen, chief technology officer at Castle Rock Research.

A built-in incentive program encourages students to continue studying by providing rewards like iTunes gift cards, iPods, sporting goods, and clothing for completing lessons and quizzes.

Solaro includes social elements like forums, but discussions are restricted to educational topics, according to Madsen. “We wanted to ensure that what Solaro didn't become is a dating website for Grade 9 students… if two students want to talk to each other, they have to talk to each other about a lesson,” he said.

Activities are monitored through a combination of live people and real-time software that flags inappropriate content. “We need to keep an eye on things to ensure that this is really a good, wholesome educational environment we are providing them,” said Madsen.

Solaro apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad allow students to take assessments, go through lessons, and access their notes. Currently, the apps do not support discussions as a result of concerns that the function would generate a 17+ app rating from Apple, according to Madsen. “We need a dialogue about that, and once we are sure we can do that without affecting our rating, we will turn it on,” he said.

The iPhone and iPad apps are very similar right now, but Castle Rock will introduce disparities, according to Madsen. “There will definitely be different functionality available for the tablet-based version of Solaro versus the mobile version of Solaro simply because of the screen size… there are certain things you just can't do on a 320 x 480 mobile screen,” he said.

Castle Rock also plans to make the device-based versions of Solaro more functional than the Web. “With something like the iPad, you can really do that. We can pretty much take everything out of a student's backpack but their No. 2 pencil and just kind of replace those tools,” he said.

Students can also study offline by downloading lessons and notes. “As a student accesses materials in Solaro, we locally store copies of that material on the device,” said Madsen.

Education company offers Canadian students an opportunity to study for exams with the Solaro online learning application EDMONTON (CNW) - Solaro announces the “First in Class with an iPad” contest to help students across Canada better prepare for their final exams. Students who sign up on Solaro will be entered to win one of five iPads. Solaro is available for free to all students across Canada until September 2010.

The “First in Class with an iPad” contest is designed to reward students who take an active interest in better preparing for their final exams.

Students who create a free account on Solaro, read a lesson, and take a quiz will be automatically entered.

Contest winners will receive an iPad loaded with the SOLARO application enabling them to study anytime and anywhere. The contest runs from May 3, 2010 at 9:00 AM EDT and closes on May 17, 2010 at 6:00 PM EDT. Winners will be announced at 2:00 PM EDT on May 18, 2010 and are selected through a random draw.

About SOLARO: The SOLARO educational application is available online, through the iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices. It enables students to study for exams anytime and anywhere through proprietary technology that delivers interactive content completely aligned with regional curriculum. Curriculum alignment means SOLARO supports exactly what students learn in the classroom. SOLARO is a product of Castle Rock Research Corp., founded in 1995. Castle Rock's team of teachers have developed more than 100 print study resources and have sold more than one million copies across Canada.

www.solaro.com or "SOLARO" on Facebook /NOTE TO PHOTO EDITORS: A photo accompanying this release is available at http://photos.newswire.ca. Images are free to accredited members of the media/ -0- 05/03/2010 /For further information: Chris Bolivar, Media Relations for SOLARO, McRobbie Optamedia, (780) 903-6782, cbolivar(at)solaro.com/ CO: Castle Rock Research Corp.

ST: Alberta IN: EDU PUB SU: -30- CNW 09:00e 03-MAY-10

Castle Rock Research India is a part of Castle Rock Research Corporation, a premier educational resource development company headquartered in Edmonton, Canada, that offers print and digital educational resources in the K–12 and higher-education markets. Castle Rock Research India represents the technology division of Castle Rock Research Corporation, and the primary focus is to build technology-based educational products for the North American market. Founded in 2008, Castle Rock Research India is a world-class product development company with a strong focus in the open-source and Agile software sevelopment domains. “Our Vision is to build innovative technology solutions, leveraging agile processes, delivered by best-in-breed technology people. With 70+ employees, 2 R&D centers - Bangalore and Kolkata, we have constantly delivered path-breaking software and nurtured a unique winning culture,” said Vishwas Mudagal, CEO of Castle Rock Research India.

Over the years, Castle Rock Research has successfully launched a number for product lines, and we are in the process of building path-breaking products—all aimed at providing exceptional value to students, teachers, and educators—for the global education market. SOLARO is the most ambitious project, aimed at developing a robust and comprehensive education system that contains innovative content, aligned to well-structured curriculum. The Solaro environment allows students to take a formative assessment, which will instantly yield an individualized learning program that will guide the instruction. “Our Accreditation Management System (AMS) provides a new-age digital solution to universities and faculties in addressing the organization, administration, and control of all information related to the accreditation process,” said Mudagal. More importantly, by using the AMS, universities or individual faculties will greatly reduce the time and effort, and ultimately the cost, of organizing the data relevant to accreditation auditors.

Granite CMS — An innovative tool that provides a resource development infrastructure to efficiently manage workflows related to content development. At Castle Rock Research, the software development methods are unique. The company is a strong believer of Agile software development and evolves the processes every day. “Scrum comes alive in day-to-day life at Castle Rock, and you will see teams busy with daily standups, Scrum of Scrums meetings, sprint planning meetings, sprint review meetings, and sprint retrospectives. On the other hand, Extreme Programming (XP) gives us that extra edge to build world-class products and solutions,” said Mudagal

“Also, at Castle Rock, our people are our most valuable asset, and we are committed to fostering a culture that exhibits this value.” If there is anything that is common among all Castle Rockers, it is passion—for life, for thinking outside the box, and for creating world-class products.