Flash For Learning

At work, I’ve successfully gotten my group on-board with implementing BaseCamp as a collaborative project management tool. Initially, it was to meet a request from my boss to replace a Word doc and Excel spreadsheet that had to be updated by everyone on what projects were being worked on (our weekly status reports) and how much time we were spending on these projects (resource allocation reports).

Basecamp is so easy for the end-user, it’s going to be rolled out to Project Managers in the organization, too. Finally, we’ll have everyone working on the same project on the same page — literally.

One thing that BaseCamp is not so good at is reporting. I have a pretty non-techie group and there are a lot of clicks involved (although pretty easy) to read into what everyone’s doing on their projects. Fortunately, BaseCamp has a documented API (one of the reasons I wanted BaseCamp was its extensibility) and there are a number of scripts emerging to make use of it.

Aaron Quint at QuirkyBlog posted a PHP wrapper for pulling information from a BaseCamp project. After having to fumble around with DreamHost’s implementation of PEAR (adjusting some relative paths to hard paths in some of the PEAR scripts as well as Quint’s Basecamp.php class), I was able to pull a list of projects lickety split.

Are you schooled on 6 Sigma?

I’m about halfway through reading a fascinating (and somewhat jarring) book by Kalym A. Islam called “Developing and Measuring Training the 6 Sigma Way.” Once you get past the point that the author obviously doesn’t like Instructional Design pillars like Bloom, Kirkpatrick and others — the author makes a stunning case for developing training by performing 6 Sigma practices in Define and Measure phases before the more familiar Analyze, Design, Develop and Implement phases of a training project, with “tollgates” along the way to make sure the project is actually on track to deliver on the business needs driving the training.

If anyone’s familiar with 6 Sigma and you’re in the training milieu, please comment here. I want to find out as much as I can about 6 Sigma and how it’s actually being practiced in learning/training organizations.

Just some inside humor here… after coming from IMS, I found my own daughter in the Learning Design box…

With a lousy left hand, I’ve been forced to innovate (or just accept the future) and use the toys available to me on my MacBook Pro — I took my outline, whittled it down to slides in Apple Keynote, exported them as PNG files and imported them into GarageBand to put together this first podcast, covering at a (hopefully coherent) high level what I pulled from the three days I attended the IMS Quarterly meeting, kicking off an official convergence between SCORM and IMS.

Click here to download or view the podcast yourself.

I’m currently attending an IMS meeting that’s at the Oracle hq in Redwood Shores, CA (near San Fran). I’m here because I’m considering joining IMS in addition to joining the SCORM Technical Working Group (well, I’m going to joing the TWG for sure — I’m investigating IMS).

I sat in on the panel working on a charter for the next version of Tool Interoperability — offering a common set of tools available to launch from content within a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE, the new buzzword for LMS).

This chicken-scratch might be hard to decipher, so I’ll follow this up with a podcast. Due to some unfortunately placed fractured bones in my left hand, I can’t type nearly as much as it might take to put this all into context that makes sense for your smarter-than-average E-learning developer/designer.

Monday, February 5 - Tool Interoperability

• Introductions
  • Oracle 10g, Siebel, PeopleSoft | Oracle, The World’s Largest Enterprise Software Company
  • Blackboard » Educate. Innovate. Everywhere.
  • CETIS
  • ANGEL Learning
  • Microsoft
  • Sakai
  • ADL
  • Desire 2 Learn
  • Grainger
• Review Charter and current work status
  • Goal: get the charter into an actionable document by noon tomorrow.
• Review of use cases
• Use-cases for types of tools that could be made available via a VLE

To investigate:

• shibboleth.internet2.edu
• SAML - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Common Cartridge
• QTI Assessments
• Enterprise Services outcome service
• Boddington
• Deposit API
• CMI Data Model

Discussion of a registry hosted by iMS for a listing of tools and descriptor files that would be accessible via a VLE (Virtual Learning Environment).

• Web Meeting tools
  • Breeze, WebEx, etc.
• Synchronous collaboration tools
  • Blog, Wiki, Forums
• Tools using content embedded in a Common Cartridge
  • Sakai Video Report: IMS Common Cartridge Demonstration at Alt-I-Lab 2006
  • PR:IMS Global Learning Consortium Announces Breakthrough Education Industry Standard for Digital Learning Content
• QTI Assessment Tool
  • QuestionMark, as an example
• Instructor grading tool
  • Gradebook
• Content Authoring tools publishing content to the VLE
• Adaptive Learning Tool accesses SCORM/CMI data model at the VLE
  • content delivered via the VLE that is not a scorm package, but wants to be tracked via the cmi data model
  • acts as a relay
• Learner launching TI Tool within VLE using 3rd party authentication
  • read: Shibboleth, HarvestRoad, Boddington
  • Federated authentication
  • meaning, you’re authorized in one context and as you extend your access beyond the realm of your own domain, your authentication persists across domains/apps that have agreed to accept such authentication protocol.
• Identity Management Tool controlling release of user attributes
• Administrative deployment of proxy tool through Common Cartridge
• Configuration of tool presentation
• Publisher assessment use case
• Rich media (podcasting) integration tool(s)
• Review of Requirements from Tool Interoperability 1.0
• Tool Catalog
  • issue of rights management
  • how to configure/control/limit access to a tool.
  • will be tabled after debate lasting over an hour
• Tool Presentation
  • Will enable a common presentation solution for tool that benefit from adopting the look and feel of the hosting VLE
• Web Services/Application Profiles
• Extend logical component interaction model
  • allow the outcome message to occur at an unspecified future time
  • allow web service communication between requests and outcome responses