I am taking a brief moment to blog in the midst of extreme activity. The AADL Co-Lab has an incredible number of projects happening simultaneously (23 and growing at last count) and getting my bearings has been challenging.
I am most excited by our extended partnership with the Florida Virtual School and some of the innovative technology we are developing. On the top of that list is a Flash™ display engine that allows open use of standards, multiple instructional strategies, and it’s based on XML to allow easy transference of content across platforms and standards. My tech folks are working overtime on this one and it has been quite a challenge but I got to see some of it coming together in the last few days. This is version 1.0 and the later planned versions have even more potential.
The AADLC is leading the way with vetting a proposed SCORM RTE extension. BBN has a paper that will allow a much more open and flexible architecture to allow LMS systems to merge immersive learning activities (aka games and simulations) with more traditional learning object-based content. The paper and the code are fully open for public comment at this time. I encourage both ISD and IT systems people in the learning space to take a look at this because it is likely to have a huge impact on the next direction for SCORM. To participate in the conversation, you can go to this URL (free registration required): http://adlcommunity.net/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=116
Our Plone repository project is moving forward. This project started before I came on board and an early version of the system (called Local Content Server or LCS) is now available. After learning more about this project I was disappointed to hear we had not done more to integrate with the work already conducted by COSL with eduCommons. Granted, when the project first started the goals were a little different but I hope we can build on existing work rather than reinventing the wheel. We do have some specific requirements for what we are trying to do that include simple tools for adding metadata for federated repository searches but I believe it should be an additional set of tools versus a whole new repository. More to come on this one…
Finally, we are in the process of completely overhauling our own website. It served its purpose well over the last few years but, to meet our increasing mission goals, we need something more dynamic and flexible. We have decided to use Drupal as the content system because of our publishing needs and the need to support multiple site instances. We are not using Drupal for any other projects at the moment so it is offering us a chance to get in and get up close and personal with a different CMS.
There will be more soon and I hope within the next couple of week to have regular contributions coming directly through the AADL website!