tech-ed collisions

IMS exploring use of Creative Commons licensing

From Stephen Downes' blog, notification that the IMS Global Learning Consortium is exploring the use of Creative Commons licensing in its interoperability specifications. The press release from IMS doesn't go into a great deal of detail other than plans to run a pilot project under a form of Creative Commons licence. It will be interesting to see what form that licence takes. It sounds like it could be a great initiative and I look forward to more details coming out.

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Posted March 4, 2008

PILIN closure report out now

One of the more interesting projects that I have had the good fortune to be exposed to recently has been the PILIN (Persistent Identifier Linking INfrastructure) project which is one of the Systemic Infrastructure Initiative projects. We use persistent identifiers in some of our projects (eg LORN) and it has been great to collaborate in some way with others who are addressing the same types of issues. Anyway, the PILIN Project is coming to an end (of sorts - we should be seeing some of the outputs from it elsewhere) and the final report is available here for anyone with an interest in persistent identifiers.

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ADL - SIFA Partnership

Some more news on standards. For those interested in SCORM, ADL and SIFA have just announced a partnership that will be looking at how to integrate SCORM into school applications that are using the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF). A new version of SCORM that is '100% based on open standards' (called Core SCORM) will be developed. More information can be found here and here. I look forward to more information as it becomes available.

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Standards and Web 2.0 - On a collision course?

Interesting post from Tim Hand got me to thinking about this one. From Tim's perspective, the standards arena seems to have stalled a bit (if I'm reading correctly). When compared to what's happening in Web 2.0 with new services and technologies just powering ahead. Try to keep up with what's happening in the world of mashups alone and it's staggering. There is interoperability (of a kind) everywhere. Developers are connecting up all sorts of apps, data sources etc to deliver new, innovative services. In doing this they are not dependent on cumbersome, complex standards. We recently did some research on standards in the area of ePortfolios and one of the major findings from that was the impact that Web 2.0 was having in that area. It was hard to find ePortfolio implementations (other than vendor software) that were using standards such as IMS ePortfolio but many of the implementers were interested in using RSS and other lightweight specifications in their implementations. They could easily consume content from other sources and also publish/syndicate their content very easily. Simple specs and simple services enable them to include functions from other sites into their ePortfolios (eg using Flickr to hold images of your work). Students also saw services such as myspace and Facebook as better places for them to have their ePortfolio (there were some interesting variations on this though). So what does this mean for the formal world of standards and specifications. The very nature of the standards process is a slow one. A great deal of work goes into the development of a standard/specification which involves development work, collaboration, reviews, (public) comment, ratification and so on, all of which takes time. Time unfortunately is not 'Standards' best friend in the frenetic, fast pace of the Web 2.0 world. As the rate of change increases in both speed and sheer number of new services, it seems to me that the slow paced standards process faces a real challenge to keep up.

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from Learning Impact

Some interesting thoughts to come out of IMS Learning Impact. Here are a few notes - they probably need to be expanded on but it's interesting to get these down as they occur: 'education is the only industry still debating the use of technology...' - comment about education in the USA but probably applies to many other countries. 'education...holds on to an agricultural timeframe (and many other outdated or irrelevant concepts)....in a digital age'. There also seems to be a lot of emphasis on making improvements in disaster planning/first responders - a bit of a sad reflection on the state of things at the moment. A great deal of the conference is dedicated to open source, open content and open services. Suggestion that the open content movement will follow roughly the same path as open source. Currently it is lagging a few years behind open source. For providers, particularly smaller ones, you can't focus on who you are and what you have done in the past, but must focus instead on the future. Focus on your brand and IP is not going to help you. Open source vendors must focus on decreasing the distance between the state of their apps and 'production' as a very high priority. 'Instructional design' is in a mess. Graduates in this area not equipped to develop content to meet the needs of todays/tomorrows learners - generally no experience in games technologies and it has been argued that this is a very important aspect of learning into the future. More notes and maybe a better put together post to come.

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Interoperability 101

Ever wondered what the folks in the e-framework are up to?  Here's an interesting video introducing the Service Oriented Approach (SOA).   According to the website, " A Service Oriented Approach to creating and evolving information communication technology solutions is a phenomenon that is transforming the way many organisations in the private and public sectors operate." The video goes on to explain how.

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