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The FLVS Global team designed a new, fully compliant Learning Tool Interoperability (LTI) Hybrid Hosting system, which provides efficient content provisioning to any LTI-supported learning management system (LMS). Paired with assessments delivered into an education institution’s LMS, students and teachers are able to enjoy a smooth and seamless learning experience. This new FLVS Global hybrid hosting model has been certified by IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc. (IMS).
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The Gradient Lab Group of Telematics Applications and Services (laboratorio Gradient del Grupo de Aplicaciones y Servicios Telemáticos, GAST) from the Carlos III University of Madrid, an eMadrid network partner, and the company Simumak have developed two training simulators. The first one is a tool for the training of entrepreneurs in which the user is immersed in an adventure game during which a mentor will guide you through the process of creating your own business.
Meanwhile, the second study simulates the difficulties of accessibility of a person in a wheelchair. Students sit on a platform with a joystick and augmented reality glasses and have to take a tour in a virtual world, where they will face different obstacles (ramps, curbs, stairs, getting on and off a bus, crossing different terrain or maneuvering in tight spaces).
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New iTEC article
Students designing educational games
27/05/2013
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When teachers try to implement game-based learning, they always have questions like: What kind of games should we use? How high is the educational value of the game? How much do the students like the game? One safe way to answer these questions is to let the students develop the educational games instead of playing the games - the focus can then be on the process of developing the game. The article describes a case-study in which 11-12 year old students designed educational games for learning English as a foreign language.

The article describes how students in the 5th grade were asked to design a game that teaches topics of English as a foreign language. The case study is part of iTEC project pre-pilots. The intent of this article is to provide a good example of how to motivate students and integrate innovative activities into teaching.

The article was published by European Alliance for Innovation (EAI Endorsed Transactions on Game Based Learning, Volume 13, Issue 01-12). The authors, Martin Sillaots and Ingrid Maadvere, work at the iTEC partner organisation, the Tiger Leap Foundation.
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This brief provides explicit guidance for ensuring that requests for proposals for assessment content and delivery platforms that support accessibility accommodations address the use of open standards.

The IMS Global Learning Consortium provides interoperability standards to address the most often-encountered integration issues for digital content, including two long-standing needs in electronic assessments. The Accessible Portable Item Protocol (APIP) standard,  (a) allows for the transfer of assessment content (items or tests) between suppliers using a standardized XML format and (b) provides the necessary accessibility information in that content to support the needs of diverse students. Products that pass interoperability testing are designated with the IMS Certification logo shown to the right and a unique registration number available at http://www.imscert.org/ IMS has worked with a wide range of suppliers, agencies, and end users to put these standards in place.

The document covers accessibility enriched assessment content in the context of assessment systems (such as authoring systems, test and item repositories, delivery platforms, etc.). For interoperability of other digital content and applications within a learning platform (LMS, VLE, etc.), please see the companion documents from IMS.


Application and Policy Brief: Open-Standards Requirements for Assessment Content and Systems
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After the presentation of all project deliverables by Simon GRANT (InLOC Project Leader), the WS proceeded to the formal balloting in order to approve the following draft CWAs:
  • Draft CWA 1: InLoc- Information Model for Learning Outcomes and Competences
  • Draft CWA 2: InLoc- Guidelines including the Integration of Learning Outcomes and Competences into existing specifications.

The above mentioned documents were published in the following CEN website for its public review until 2013.04.01: http://www.cen.eu/cen/Sectors/Sectors/ISSS/Pages/default.aspx. After the balloting process, both projects were approved by 14 affirmative votes and no votes against its final publication as a CWA.

With regard to the 3rd CWA which was in public review period until 2013-04-19 (beyond the date in which this meeting was held), the required balloting will be launched by the WS secretary through the LiveLink tool.
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The Semantic Web Interest Group has published a new draft for the vCard-in-RDF Ontology, edited by Renato Iannella and James McKinney. The new draft updates the previous version by aligning it with the latest IETF vCard specification, ie, RFC6350.
vCard in RDF Ontology
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The DC-2013 Special Session titled "Long-term Preservation and Governance of RDF Vocabularies" will be sponsored by W3C and will focuses on issues related to the usability of RDF vocabularies in the long term (as defined in "decades") including continued access to documentation, inheritance of ownership and maintenance responsibility, and the continued resolvability of domain names. The usability of Linked Data relies on the ability to interpret what the data means, which depends on the availability of the RDF vocabularies used in the data. RDF vocabularies are created by a wide range of people and institutions, from individual researchers to national libraries and for-profit corporations, for a wide range of descriptive requirements. The oldest RDF vocabularies in existence are just fifteen years old. It is time to look systematically at how ownership and responsibility for today's vocabularies will pass to the next generation.
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The general objective of the call for proposals is:

To encourage European policy cooperation to support – through ET 2020 - countries’ efforts to meet the objectives of Europe 2020, as reflected in the 2013 Annual Growth Survey and the Rethinking Education Communication, notably: developing skills for growth and competitiveness, strengthening youth employability and reducing early school leaving levels, in a context that prioritises efficient investment in education and training, by:
  • supporting awareness-raising and institutional commitment, coordination and partnership with all stakeholders to promote, in particular, skills for growth and competitiveness and youth employability (part A)
  • supporting the development, testing and evaluation, by means of field trials, of innovative policy solutions to reduce early school leaving. (part B)
The call also provides opportunities for ministries and stakeholders to test - in real life situations - the implementation of innovative policies (policy experimentations) addressing European goals.
This call for proposals comprises two separate parts:
  • Part A - Support to national implementation and awareness raising of the objectives of European cooperation in education and training (ET 2020).
  • Part B - Support to implementation of innovative policy solutions at institutional level to reduce early school leaving, in line with the priorities set out in Europe 2020 and ET 2020.
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IMS Global Announces the Educational App Store Project
Project Aimed at Creating a Reference Implementation Based on Marketplace Open Standards
09/04/2013
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Lake Mary, Florida, USA – 9 April 2013 - Can universities and school districts control their own online “store” of educational content and applications for easy access and use by students and faculty? Yes they can - and they will in only a few short years. Will such an “app store” be based on Apple, Google or Amazon?  No it will not.


The “take it or leave it” proprietary vertical integration strategies of consumer-oriented providers of digital books and applications, that maximizes their ability to create revenues from sales of such resources, have left educational institutions with a conundrum. Do we dare dictate to our students and teachers a “preferred platform?” Of course, the answer to that question needs to be “no.”


The good news is the majority of educational content and applications is not beholden to any of those consumer platforms. Leading providers of educational resources have instead rallied around open standards provided through community collaboration via the non-profit IMS Global Learning Consortium.  The IMS web site contains many examples of education segment specific applications and content that can be easily integrated into the academic enterprise using these open standards.


“Unfortunately the large suppliers to the consumer market don’t have much interest in the special requirements of educational institutions,” remarked Dr. Rob Abel, Chief Executive of IMS Global. “However, the educational segment is more than capable of guiding its own destiny with respect to making digital resources ‘work’ for the needs of their stakeholders. By working together to solve this problem, institutions reap huge savings by not becoming dependent on closed solutions.”


The Educational App Store Project has begun a design phase in which IMS member institutions are collaborating on requirements and user scenarios. Initial participants include Framingham State University, UCLA and University of Michigan. Initial designs will be presented at the IMS Learning Impact 2013 Conference, May 13-16, San Diego, CA, USA.


After the design phase completes it is expected that the IMS member organizations will collaborate on creating a reference implementation that will enable suppliers and/or institutions to easily replicate the model. Open APIs, based on IMS standards, will be provided to enable options for including content from the proprietary sources mentioned earlier, as well as resources built natively to use IMS open standards.
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Due to travel restrictions within the government, ADL is expanding local and virtual opportunities to interact with the community. Instead of the annual iFest conference, this year ADL will host a series of “PlugFest” events to showcase applications that use the Experience API and other learning technologies. Our intent is to host PlugFest events at the Alexandria, VA and Orlando, FL, ADL Co-Labs, and then present Webinar sessions of lessons learned, emerging learning trends, and other valuable information pertinent to our iFest audience. Please watch this site for PlugFest announcements and information about for monthly Webinar series. (To receive announcements via email, subscribe to the ADL Insights newsletter.)
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