1EdTech Consortium Announces Unprecedented Success of “Write Once, Run Anywhere” for Educational Software and Content
The 1EdTech members have established a new and vibrant global marketplace for educational content and software, featuring plug and play interoperability, in one year
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Lake Mary, Florida and Philadelphia, PA, USA – 17 October 2011 – The 1EdTech Consortium (1EdTech) today released an update on the progress of the “Write Once, Run Anywhere” initiative, first announced one year ago at EDUCAUSE 2010. One year ago 1EdTech announced that the goal of being able to develop an application or digital content one way and then seamlessly integrating it with any course management system or educational portal has been achieved. This year at EDUCAUSE 2011, 1EdTech is pleased to announce that over 70 certifications for interoperable applications and platforms have been achieved. Within the last year 1EdTech has achieved institutional adoption by the following systems and institutions: The California State University System, Florida Virtual School, Louisiana Community and Technical College System, Lone Star College System, the University of Michigan, The New York City Department of Education, Penn State University, and the Tennessee Board of Regents, among others. Numerous additional products are in the process of achieving 1EdTech certification.
One of the most exciting developments over the last year has been the release of products that enable authoring of 1EdTech compliant content, including both standalone authoring platforms as well as exporting of 1EdTech content from comprehensive learning management platforms. Another major development has been the incorporation of interoperable outcomes reporting from 1EdTech applications, which is helping to usher in a new generation of actionable data and analytics to aid with student retention and achievement. Adoption of 1EdTech Learning Information Services (LIS) by the majority of the student information system providers ensures that outcomes data and user information can flow seamlessly among all the learning software and content in the academic enterprise.
To get the latest updates on and demonstrations of 1EdTech across K-20 worldwide, and to learn how to become an institutional or system level adopter, please attend the 1EdTech Update Session at EDUCAUSE at 5:00 PM, Thursday, October 20, in Room 103C.
“1EdTech provides the greatest benefits to end users – students and faculty – because 1EdTech enables a more innovative and efficient educational experience,” said Dr. Rob Abel, Chief Executive Officer of 1EdTech. “But 1EdTech also provides revolutionary benefits to IT leaders in terms of enabling a much more responsive, effective, and efficient academic enterprise. This is why we are seeing such strong adoption of the 1EdTech work at an institutional level. And for suppliers, we are nearing the end of the age of custom integrations – it’s a waste of time and money for all concerned.”
"The 1EdTech Digital Learning Services are inspired by a vision of a meaningfully open learning platform. Blackboard shares this vision, and is committed to implementing the associated standards that 1EdTech has helped bring to life for the industry--Common Cartridge, LTI, and LIS. We're also committed to the next chapter for these standards—driving adoption that will help the industry recognize the full value of this work." - Ray Henderson, CTO & President Blackboard Learn
"The CSU's 23 campuses, serving over 410,000 students, deploy a variety of learning management systems. We needed to enable the integration of services across enterprise applications such as our LMS's and our Xerxes library discovery services, which require user identity and course context. 1EdTech Basic Learning Tools Interoperability (BLTI) lets us code once and apply many times. We are deploying our BLTI-enabled Xporter Tool which enables faculty from within their LMS (Moodle, D2L, or Blackboard) to search and organize library resources and export access to these library resources to the faculty's' selected location in their LMS courses. The expanded use of library resources for instruction can reduce the cost of course materials for our students, making their college education more affordable." - Gerard L. Hanley, Senior Director, Academic Technology Services, California State University System
"At Cengage Learning we believe that using standards to focus our R&D expense on innovation will greatly improve our ability to have a meaningful impact on teaching and learning in today's heterogeneous education technology landscape. With 1EdTech-led standards like LTI, we have dramatically accelerated our time to market with solutions that deliver a seamless, more engaging and more adaptable experience than ever before,” said Curtiss Barnes, Vice President Corporate Development, Cengage Learning. “This ability to iterate quickly, without bringing pain to our customers, is a critical element of our strategy to deliver solutions that help improve student outcomes. The "write once, run anywhere" initiative is a great platform for Cengage Learning and our partners to use to demonstrate our responsiveness to the evolving needs of the education industry.”
"Implementation of the 1EdTech Basic LTI standard was an essential component of getting more than 1500 students registered and authenticated in ChemVantage on the first try without a hitch. The combination of the easy Basic LTI access with the automatic scaling characteristics of Google AppEngine hosting now makes it possible to build and operate Open Education Resources like ChemVantage on a large scale at very low cost." -Chuck Wight, founder, ChemVantage.org
“CourseSmart continues to support the initiatives for 1EdTech Technologies’ Learning Tools Interoperability. Using Basic LTI has allowed us to integrate with campus systems with unprecedented simplicity. Since receiving our 1EdTech-conformant Basic LTI standards approval last October, CourseSmart has activated more than 50 LTI-enabled service hubs, with thousands of active users. CourseSmart’s users appreciate our flexible cloud-based solutions, including the secure single sign-on feature that ensures the highest levels of data privacy, authentication, authorization and reporting functions for accessing their LMS, SIS or campus portal.” - Sean Devine, Chief Executive Officer, CourseSmart
“Desire2Learn’s early adoption and certification on 1EdTech standards continues to reap benefits for our clients, our technology partners, and content providers by making basic compatibility and integration as easy as a few clicks,” states Jeremy Auger, COO, Desire2Learn Incorporated. “As more providers come on board with support for standards, like Basic LTI and Common Cartridge, the ecosystem becomes more fluid, better supporting best-of-breed teaching and learning environments without the hassle and costs associated with custom point-to-point integrations.”
"Learning Objects was proud to be the first educational software supplier to be certified as both a provider and consumer of Basic LTI applications with Campus Pack, which offers institutions unparalleled flexibility in integration of Web 2.0 applications in the fabric of education. Basic LTI is a powerful enabling technology and we hope to see more applications commit to these standards as a way of improving the eLearning environment." - Hal Herzog, Co-founder, Learning Objects, Inc.
“The SoftChalk 'ASN Picker' demonstrates what happens when you align open access to ASN (Achievement Standards Network) learning outcomes data such as the Common Core State Standards and a vendor's innovative approach to using that data to map learning resources in 1EdTech Common Cartridges. Open access to web-enabled, linkable learning outcomes data magnifies the resulting outcome since that data then stands as a 'gateway' to other supporting resources, as a primary key for data intensive processes in learning management systems and to the tailoring of learning to individual student needs. “ – Diny Golder, Executive Director, JES & Co.
"Moodlerooms is committed to the ongoing development and contribution of code to the open-source Moodle community, a key differentiator between truly open platforms and proprietary LMS systems. Building 1EdTech Common Cartridge and LTI compliance for the newest iteration of Moodle 2 is an important milestone in advancing the adoption of these standards on a global scale.” says Lou Pugliese, Moodlerooms Chairman and CEO. “With Moodle as the global leader in truly open LMS platforms, embracing interoperability standards established by 1EdTech aligns with our company's founding mission."
“ANGEL@PennState and digital content integration made easy with 1EdTech standards. We’ve initiated collaborations with various publishers to allow seamless access to external learning objects and content from courses within ANGEL via Basic Learning Tools Interoperability (BLTI). Yes…’build once, use many’ is the right way to go.” - Terence N. O'Heron Program Manager, ANGEL (Course Management System), The Pennsylvania State University
“At SoftChalk, we know that it isn’t enough to create learning content that is interactive, challenging, and engaging for the student. There is a growing desire to associate learning content with outcomes measures and to evaluate student results accordingly. Reliable, accurate tracking of student result data, tied to curriculum standards data, is essential,” said Susan Evans, SoftChalk CEO. “To achieve that result, educators need an easy way to tag their content with standards metadata as they are creating the curriculum content. 1EdTech brought together SoftChalk and the Achievement Standards Network (asn.jesandco.org), which resulted in a cooperative effort by those companies to offer SoftChalk users an easy way to discover and align content to curriculum standards from right inside the SoftChalk editor, and then export as a Common Cartridge.”
“The Octane system is designed to allow publishers to energize their content in a myriad of ways. Ucompass.com selected LTI to assign delivery of its Octane tools. This allows Octane publishers to deliver benefits most readily to targeted users.” - Edward Mansouri, CEO and Founder, Ucompass.com, Inc.
About 1EdTech Consortium (1EdTech GLC)
From Innovation to Impact!--1EdTech Learning is a nonprofit member organization that strives to enable the growth and impact of learning technology in higher education, K-12, and corporate education worldwide. 1EdTech GLC members are leading corporations, higher education institutions, school districts and government organizations worldwide that are enabling the future of education by collaborating on interoperability standards and major adoption projects for the digital support of education and learning. 1EdTech GLC also sponsors Learning Impact: a global awards program and conference that recognizes the impact of innovative technology on educational access, affordability, and quality. For more information visit www.imsglobal.org
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