Mobile means different things to different people. Instead of spouting out my thoughts about what mobile is and what it does, I will stay neutral and point you to the eLearning Atlas instead. We’ve uncovered a lot of really great companies making waves with mobile learning, so take a look and see what they mean when they say mobile. If you are looking for a mobile solution, this is definitely the place to start. We’ve got over 100 platform providers, authoring tools and content creators working with mobile learning in a variety of ways.

Whether you are creating stellar mobile content or new ways to access it, if you aren’t a part of the Atlas, pretty please let me know. I’m running low on text messages for the month, so get in touch via smoke signal or email me at jena.lawing@scorm.com this time around. Thanks!

While Chris and I worked through the Atlas, we kept an eye on words that came up to see if we could find any trends in the industry. I’m not one for graphs and charts, that’s more Chris’s speed. What I’m into are trends and patterns. (If you were wondering, I have an affinity for plaid, houndstooth and ikat patterns).

After months of observation, one of the trends we saw was a move in the industry towards social learning.

Everyone has different meanings for what “social learning” is and what it does. For some, it means collaborating with others while creating or viewing content. For others, social learning means simply the integration of social media, like blogs, wikis, Twitter or Facebook into traditional eLearning. For me, social learning is both of these things.

A few months ago, I added Cookie Intern to my resume here at Rustici Software. A match made in heaven, as I love to bake and the Rusticians love to eat.

All of the sudden, every batch of cookies started tasting like soap. I couldn’t figure it out. I changed pans, mixing bowls, spatulas, everything. I took my questions to Facebook and Twitter, begging my friends to provide suggestions, hints, anything that would vanquish this soapy situation. They posted helpful links and speculations, and finally I got my answer. Baking soda.

Old, old baking soda that began its journey with me as a high school senior, watched me matriculate at Alabama, witnessed the glory of our 2009 National Championship (Roll Tide), smiled at my graduation, and travelled with me to my new home in Nashville. Who knew that old baking soda made cookies taste like soap, right?

Anyways, my point is that I could have Googled the answer myself but I used my community, where my friends and family could brainstorm with me and the group came to the final conclusion, together. This is what social learning is all about: making connections to people and what they know.

Chris and I have been fortunate enough, through working with the Atlas, to discover companies who are integrating different forms of social learning into their solutions. Take a look at all of the different companies in the eLearning Atlas that are making the move towards social learning.

So keep your eyes open, eLearning world. We’ve only scratched the surface of what social learning is capable of.

Sometimes, though, I get questions that make me laugh.  Today, I feel like I need to share this one because it isn’t the first time I’ve gotten a question like this one.

What is Scorm Compliance?

OK, good question.  I get this one a lot, so I have a sense of where it’s headed.  My answer:

Is this what you’re looking for?  The distinction between compliance and conformance?  Or something more like this, a basic description of SCORM?

The response (slightly rephrased):

Yes both are good.  There is a training specialist job interview question? ”Which of the following best describes your experience with Scorm Compliance?” (Then # years and months choice) So what does experience with Scorm Compliance mean in this context?

Let’s cut to the chase.  The answer is none.  You have no experience if you don’t know what it is.

Funny, yes.  Uncommon?  Not entirely.  People think, or more accurately hope, that their products are SCORM conformant.  Let me put it simply… if you haven’t tried, or worked at it, your product simply is not SCORM conformant, or IMS BLTI compliant, or AICC conformant.  These things take effort.  And so does acquiring SCORM experience as an individual.

My Atlas Haiku

How to use Atlas
Enter search criteria,
browse, select, repeat.

Not the world’s greatest haiku, but you get the picture. Sure, you can search and find what you are looking for no problem, but you can do so much MORE. The great thing about the eLearning Atlas is you can tailor it to fit your needs. If you are looking for career development content, chances are we have quite a few to choose from. If you are looking for something a little more obscure, like cat noises, well, that’s precisely why we integrated Google Site Search. Here are some of our favorite things to do with the eLearning Atlas.

Search Criteria

We think variety is the spice of life, (well that and attacking the net in ping pong), so we’ve given you some options when it comes to how you search. Whether users type in products, vendor names or keywords, their search will pull up the most relevant entries for them. Keywords can be any number of things, ranging from specific to extremely vague. For example, say a user is looking for K-12 content, their search would look something like this:

If you’re more like Chris and decide “cat noises” is what you’re into, type it in and it will look like this…

(Someone please ask Chris why he is always typing this in the Search bar.) It amazes me every time that we even have search results for the most obscure keywords! This is where Google Site Search becomes a great tool. If we don’t have a tool that offers exactly what you are looking for, we bring in Google results that mention whatever you are seeking.

Users can also change how the results are displayed, depending on the types of entries they are looking for, making each search a unique experience. Each search can be sorted by Relevancy, Product Name or Description as well as Vendor Name or Description or Powered by Scorm.com (that’s us!) Pretty cool, huh? We think so too.

Filter Options

Who has time to search through the thousands of entries we have available on the Atlas? For the more discriminating Atlas user, have we got news for you. You can filter the results for exactly what you are looking for. Just select the options that are most important to you, anything from Product Type, Installation or even by tags, we have over 100 to choose from. You really can have it your way, so give it a whirl!

This ain’t your Grandma’s map

We have been saying since before we started the Atlas, that we were going to ‘map’ the eLearning industry and we’ve done just that. Literally, we made a map. You can now see that eLearning isn’t just concentrated in one region, it is spread across the entire globe. We have companies representing every corner of the world, minus Antarctica of course. So take a look, see who is in your neck of the woods. Just click Browse the Map on the Atlas homepage.

Once upon a time, well, that’s not exactly how this starts. This story actually started about 7 months ago when Chris and I first started working here, at Rustici Software. We were hired to embark on a journey together to find all of the eLearning companies and highlight them in a neutral environment, so you all could find one another.

This was the birth of the eLearning Atlas, a comprehensive map of the eLearning industry and all the products available on the market. The genius of our pairing is that we complement each other. Chris is level headed, pensive, deliberate, and I’m just…not. We found thousands of possible companies, supporting a wide variety of standards. So off we went and these are our stories…

Jena’s Journey:

 

Photo from Wikipedia

The Atlas is my Jabberwocky and I am Alice. During my journey through the Atlas, I learned more about myself, about the companies listed, and the eLearning industry as a whole. At the beginning, I was terrified of the companies put in front of me. There were over 3,000 companies to reach out to, with the list growing everyday. Chris and I split up the list and I went to tackling these companies, one by one.

The Atlas was still a creature looming in the distance, one day I would have to face it, but for the time being, I was only learning. Learning about how the industry is moving, changing, evolving. Companies moving into the unknown to push the boundaries of what learning is and how it was accomplished. The list began to shrink, albeit very slowly, and I became more comfortable speaking about complex concepts, standards and the companies themselves. In a sense, I grew stronger, more capable.

All of the learning, conversations, and time, have been leading up to this. The moment I slay my Jabberwocky. And I am proud to say that finally, the Atlas is ready. Well, at least Phase 1. The Atlas is an ever-evolving project, we will add companies as we find them. So if you are out there and not on the Atlas, please let us know.

Chris’s Take:

To translate, we’ve mapped all the companies on our radar. We’ve discovered some interesting trends and noted the use of the various standards. Completion of the eLearning Atlas is a moving target, there’s plenty of work left to do.  If we’ve missed a product, let us know.  If you see something we could have done better, tell us. If you are a talent management tool, you’re up next.

I’m currently looking into the patterns we’ve collected, exploring what standards are used throughout the industry, comparing adoption rates and analyzing trends among products. The Atlas is designed to be a useful way to find products that compliment one another, or fit a specific need. We’re building a community that is focused on helping eLearning companies work together, sharing courses and systems. We’re keeping it free, because free is good. I hope you’ll get involved and join the conversation. We’ve built a commenting tool into each product in the eLearning Atlas. So go ahead, comment away, tell our community about your experience using the products we’ve found.
Have some ideas on how we can help the eLearning industry play nicely with one another? Interested in the trends the Atlas shows? Have questions about eLearning products or standards? Want to join Jena and fight imaginary creatures? Drop us a line, we’ll be happy to help.

Check out our Press Release for more information.

There’s a new TV show “Around the World in 80 Ways” that challenges 2 guys to use 80 different modes of transportation to circumnavigate the globe. We’re not trying to do that, but we do want to see our SCORM solutions adopted around the world and eliminate the hurdles that come with internationalization.

Shortly after we launched SCORM Cloud, we began to get questions from our friends in Europe about whether we were Safe Harbor compliant. As the requests grew, it prompted us to do 2 things- find out what the heck the European Commission’s Directive on Data Protection is and why we need to be safe from it, and to take a closer look at where our customers are located. Here’s what we found:

In a nutshell, Safe Harbor certification ensures that U.S. companies comply with the EU directives on the protection of personal data. We take data security and privacy very seriously- regardless of where our users are, so going through the certification process was a no-brainer. And as of last week we are officially certified as Safe Harbor compliant. For more details, check out our privacy policy and Safe Harbor compliance.

Looking at where our customers are and the ways we support them uncovered some interesting stats. We were surprised to have so many friends around the world- 82 countries represented. Below is a breakdown of where most of our SCORM Cloud users live.

Supporting a global customer base can be challenging- especially when you consider language complexities. We recently updated our website to support 17 translations, and our SCORM Engine now supports over 16 languages. Chinese? Yep- 2 versions.

So, the world of SCORM continues to grow and the complexities on delivering our services grow too. We’re up for the challenge and invite you to join us in our travels.

Last month, we published some stats from SCORM Cloud showing the thousands of people who use it to test SCORM content every day.

Today we noticed a metric that’s even more fun…since we started tracking visits in Google Analytics, scorm.com has served over 1 Million visitors!

Thanks to everybody for stopping by!

Want to be part of this growing industry? We’re at the center of it and we’re hiring, come join us.

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

]]> http://scorm.com/blog/2011/08/why-im-bullish/feed/ 0 http://scorm.com/blog/2011/08/helping-lingos-help-organizations-that-help-others/ http://scorm.com/blog/2011/08/helping-lingos-help-organizations-that-help-others/#comments Tue, 16 Aug 2011 18:41:35 +0000 Tammy Rutherford http://scorm.com/?p=11741 The Challenge 

LINGOs is a consortium of over 60 international humanitarian relief, development, conservation and health organizations. They provide the latest learning technologies and courses from industry leading partners so their non-profit members can increase the skill levels of their employees, thereby increasing the impact of their programs.

While LINGOs provides a robust, hosted platform to administer the courseware, some members have additional needs that require using other LMS solutions. For those organizations, LINGOs needed a way to deliver their course library to the member’s external LMS, while still controlling access to the content.

Enter SCORM Cloud with Dispatch

LINGOs partnered with Rustici Software to manage the delivery of the content. By using the Dispatch feature within SCORM Cloud, LINGOs member organizations can access the LINGOs course library within their own SCORM-compliant LMS while LINGOs continues to retain control of distribution and access to the content.

“Rustici Software has been tremendously supportive of LINGOs and SCORM Dispatch has been an invaluable tool for us. It has enabled us to maintain control of the intellectual property that has been generously made available by our corporate partners, while allowing our members to make independent decisions regarding the LMS that best suits their needs. SCORM Dispatch allows us to accommodate those decisions without costly and time-intensive custom interfaces.” — Eric Berg, Executive Director, LINGOs

Get the full story on LINGOs and see how their members are using SCORM Dispatch to enhance their learning initiatives.

Click here to see how SCORM Cloud and Dispatch can help you manage your content distribution.

So now’s your chance. We’re hiring. Developer types. All sizes. Bonus points if you can beat Tim at ping pong.

• Why you want to work here. (Well most of why. It doesn’t mention the cookies.)
• How to make it happen
• Some background on how we look at hiring.