Educational Technology Trends: Plug and Play Educational Software

(Joint Crosstalk/Ed Tech Partners presentation)

Tuesday, September 7, 2004, 11:00pm — 1:00pm, Mezzanine Lounge W20-307)

How will the innovative digital repositories and learning systems being developed at MIT work with commercial products and other available tools? How far away are we from "Plug and Play" educational software? Come to this presentation for a view of the current state of the art and to learn about recent work in this area.

Interoperability specifications such as those coming out of the Open Knowledge Initiative (O.K.I.) will allow new educational technologies to be more easily integrated with each other and with our growing campus infrastructure. MIT faculty and instructional staff will eventually reap the benefits of this trend when they can select and use their applications of choice and know that they can be integrated in useful ways with other current and future educational software applications and tools.

Giunti Interactive Labs, which provides learning content and knowledge management services and products, has recently collaborated with MIT as part of the O.K.I project and as members of the IMS Global Learning Consortium to utilize the O.K.I . Interoperability standards intot their products. Jeff Merriman from IS&T Academic Computing and O.K.I., and Niccolò Giaccone from Giunti Labs, will demonstrate how Giunti utiilized O.K.I Open Service Interface Definitions (OSIDs), in particular the Repository OSID, to more easily integrate digital repositories of learning content into their learn eXact Learning Content Management System (LCMS).

The presentation will also cover Giunti's perspective on market motivations for adopting inteoperability standards and how educational technologists on campus might leverage a diverse marketplace of educational software.

Biographies

Jeff Merriman is currently Senior Strategist for Academic Computing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and projectdirector of the Open Knowledge Initiative (O.K.I). O.K.I. is defining open architectural specifications for educational software that targets the interoperability requirements of the higher education community.

Jeff has spent much of his career building and promoting various kind of technology infrastructure for higher education. As Director of Academic Computing at Stanford University he brought the notion of "Wired Campuses" into the forefront by networking all of Stanford’s graduate and undergraduate residence halls, leading an aggressive effort that began in 1987. Jeff also founded the annual ResNet Symposia series. This event brings together information technologists from around the world to share implementation, support, and educational strategies pertaining to distributed, residential computing environments in higher education.

In 1998 Jeff helped to form Stanford’s Academic Computing program and became Director of Academic Computing Technology. In this role he began to widen his focus to include issues of software infrastructure in support of educational initiatives.

Niccolò Giaccone is currently US Operations Manager for Giunti Interactive Labs, Europe’s leading Company in eLearning R&D and standardization activities with more than 30 active R&D Projects in the field of eLearning future, Content Management and 3rd generation publishing devices and networks (e.g. eLearning Content Brokerage, Web Services, Mobile Learning, Interactive TV , Learning Content Management Solutions), more than 100 bespoke projects for European leading Corporations, Universities and Public Bodies and developer of learn eXact® (www.learnXact.com), Europe’s first eLearning Content Management (LCMS) technology fully based on XML, Learning Objects and the full set of IMS and SCORM specifications.

Born in Rome in 1971, he earned a Master Degree in Computer Engineering in 1999 at the University Of Florence, Italy, presenting the thesis “Introduction of the usability practices in a ISO certified software development process for Computer Based Training�.

(Joint Crosstalk/Ed Tech Partners presentation)

Tuesday, September 7, 2004, 11:00pm — 1:00pm, Mezzanine Lounge W20-307)

How will the innovative digital repositories and learning systems being developed at MIT work with commercial products and other available tools? How far away are we from "Plug and Play" educational software? Come to this presentation for a view of the current state of the art and to learn about recent work in this area.

Interoperability specifications such as those coming out of the Open Knowledge Initiative (O.K.I.) will allow new educational technologies to be more easily integrated with each other and with our growing campus infrastructure. MIT faculty and instructional staff will eventually reap the benefits of this trend when they can select and use their applications of choice and know that they can be integrated in useful ways with other current and future educational software applications and tools.

Giunti Interactive Labs, which provides learning content and knowledge management services and products, has recently collaborated with MIT as part of the O.K.I project and as members of the IMS Global Learning Consortium to utilize the O.K.I . Interoperability standards intot their products. Jeff Merriman from IS&T Academic Computing and O.K.I., and Niccolò Giaccone from Giunti Labs, will demonstrate how Giunti utiilized O.K.I Open Service Interface Definitions (OSIDs), in particular the Repository OSID, to more easily integrate digital repositories of learning content into their learn eXact Learning Content Management System (LCMS).

The presentation will also cover Giunti's perspective on market motivations for adopting inteoperability standards and how educational technologists on campus might leverage a diverse marketplace of educational software.

Biographies

Jeff Merriman is currently Senior Strategist for Academic Computing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and projectdirector of the Open Knowledge Initiative (O.K.I). O.K.I. is defining open architectural specifications for educational software that targets the interoperability requirements of the higher education community.

Jeff has spent much of his career building and promoting various kind of technology infrastructure for higher education. As Director of Academic Computing at Stanford University he brought the notion of "Wired Campuses" into the forefront by networking all of Stanford’s graduate and undergraduate residence halls, leading an aggressive effort that began in 1987. Jeff also founded the annual ResNet Symposia series. This event brings together information technologists from around the world to share implementation, support, and educational strategies pertaining to distributed, residential computing environments in higher education.

In 1998 Jeff helped to form Stanford’s Academic Computing program and became Director of Academic Computing Technology. In this role he began to widen his focus to include issues of software infrastructure in support of educational initiatives.

Niccolò Giaccone is currently US Operations Manager for Giunti Interactive Labs, Europe’s leading Company in eLearning R&D and standardization activities with more than 30 active R&D Projects in the field of eLearning future, Content Management and 3rd generation publishing devices and networks (e.g. eLearning Content Brokerage, Web Services, Mobile Learning, Interactive TV , Learning Content Management Solutions), more than 100 bespoke projects for European leading Corporations, Universities and Public Bodies and developer of learn eXact® (www.learnXact.com), Europe’s first eLearning Content Management (LCMS) technology fully based on XML, Learning Objects and the full set of IMS and SCORM specifications.

Born in Rome in 1971, he earned a Master Degree in Computer Engineering in 1999 at the University Of Florence, Italy, presenting the thesis “Introduction of the usability practices in a ISO certified software development process for Computer Based Training�.