There are so many super cool EdTech startups right now. The list goes on and on, and nearly every one of them is making a tragic mistake, a mistake that corporate LMSs and content vendors made about 15 years ago. Nearly every EdTech company seems to believe that they can live in isolation. EdTech companies must find a way to share data and experiences and content and workflows. APIs are great, and most of this new breed do have an API, but it’s completely impractical to expect that these companies will build to suit each and every distinct API for sharing experiences and data, etc. When Aspen goes from 5th grade to 6th grade, will her experiences in elementary school follow her? When Amelia dominates Princess Math on Saturday morning, will her teacher know that she’s mastered single digit addition on Monday morning? Will the state of California be able to take their students’ history and granular experiences with them when they’re forced to buy a less expensive student management system? It’s time for EdTech to embrace a shared language for communicating these experiences, and you better believe I have the right answer for them. The post EdTech’s Big Mistake appeared first on SCORM - .

It’s official. We’re three for three in the Nashville Business Journal’s annual Best Places to Work contest. We’re proud to be the place people want to come work. It certainly makes it easier to bring on more great people and I love the fact that nobody seems to want to leave. Great people are the foundation of a great company and we have some of the best. I can’t want to see what they do next. The post Three For Three appeared first on SCORM - .

The past week or so Nashville has experienced some pretty intense heat. This wasn’t the normal kind of heat where the temperature and humidity levels are roughly the same. This was a  new kind of heat. Suffocating, debilitating, triple digit heat. The kind of heat that does this to frogs….. Now, I know you’re asking yourself  "why do you care about this frog". The answer is simple. This frog was on a mission. Chris found this frog stuck to the middle of the sidewalk outside our office. Our office is comfortably situated at the end of a long building. We have a sidewalk that completely surrounds 3 sides of our office. The long stretch of sidewalk on the end has a small creek. This creek is usually filled with fast food trash (we pick it up!) courtesy of the hoodlums that hang out on our deck. That creek was where the frog was headed. This frog was killed mid-stride as he tried to approach the watery goodness of the creek. All he wanted was to spend an hour or two in the cool water, maybe cover himself with mud (do frogs do that?) and cool off. To get away from the heat that literally sucked him dry. Poor guy.   The post It’s hot outside. appeared first on SCORM - .

I love SCORM. I’ve built a career and a business around SCORM. When I first read the SCORM spec, I admired its elegance and foresight. SCORM has revolutionized the elearning industry and allowed a market to flourish. SCORM certainly has some warts and even a few character flaws, but I love it all the same. I love SCORM so much it’s even written all over my bicycle. But, SCORM is showing its age. It has carried us as far as it can take us. It’s time for something new, something fresh, something innovative. Something that can propel this stagnant industry forward and become its workhorse for the next decade. Fortunately that something is here. The Tin Can API is the future. From now on, we will be a "Tin Can First" company. We announced our "Tin Can First" strategy at our company-wide planning meeting last week; we have pivoted. Tin Can is happening. Tin Can is real. Tin Can is going to revolutionize the industry, and we’re going to lead the way. You should come along. We are going to ensure Tin Can’s success. We are going to help our customers embrace its capabilities. We are going to help foster a community of adoption and provide adopters with the resources they need to succeed. We are going to develop new and innovative products around the Tin Can API. We will dedicate our energy, thoughts and innovation to projects empowered by the Tin Can API. Tin Can will be our growth engine. We aren’t abandoning SCORM, there’s just not much new that can be done with it. We will still maintain our products and help people implement SCORM. You will still get the same great support you have come to expect. We still love you Grandma SCORM, but we’re going to spend a lot of time with the Tin Can Toddler we have running around. We started a new website dedicated to the evolution of the Tin Can API. Check out tincanapi.com and sign up to receive updates from that site if you haven’t already. The post Tin Can First appeared first on SCORM - .

Bathroom etiquette is a semi-frequent discussion topic around the office. It’s becoming a running joke that Tim and I care way too much about people remembering to replace an empty toilet paper roll. On the surface it’s lighthearted, but you know what, I really care. Actually, I care a whole helluva lot. It’s not about the toilet paper (we’re all smart enough to look before we sit), it’s about an attitude that cuts straight to the core of who we are and where I want to work. Changing the roll is just one of those things that needs to get done. It’s not anybody’s responsibility. It’s not in anyone’s job description, but its just gotta happen. Somebody’s gotta do it. The person who replaces the TP is the person who is going to answer a customer’s question about something well beyond the scope of what we do, just to help them out. The person who takes out the overflowing trash can is the person who is going to make a quick bug fix, even if that code technically belongs to another team. The person who puts a stray glass in the dishwasher is the person who will take 20 minutes to help a struggling peer, despite an overflowing to-do list of his own. A company filled with people who change the toilet paper is a company that delights its customers. It’s a company that respects its employees. It’s a company that can avoid a lot of structure, process, management and unnecessary BS because amazing people are filling in the cracks. A company that changes the TP, doesn’t have to fill out TPS Reports. The post Want a Great Place to Work? Change the Toilet Paper appeared first on SCORM - .

As my bio would suggest, I’m the office talker. I talk faster, louder and more frequently than everyone here in the office. This fact also explains why I get teased about my Southern accent, but that’s neither here nor there. If this was a "loudest laugh" contest, it would be a tie between Freddie and TJ. When it comes to talking, I take the cake. So instead of bothering the people around here with my chatter, I’ve decided to make my talkative nature more productive. I’m taking my talking to the Cloud. You can now chat with me LIVE about all things SCORM Cloud Monday - Friday. I’m usually around my desk from about 9am- 5pm Central time. I wish I could be available all the time, but hey, a girl’s gotta sleep sometime, right? That should give us enough time each day to talk about all the awesome things SCORM Cloud can do and hopefully, I’ll be able to help answer some questions along the way. Each chat will generate a support ticket with us, so if you need to follow up or have other questions, our support staff is there to help you out. You can find me hanging out in the Help button on the SCORM Cloud support page. It looks like this…. So pop on over and chat me, maybe? It’s awfully lonely in there without you. The post Chat me, maybe? appeared first on SCORM - .

Several people have been asking us of late how we intend to charge for the Tin Can API/LRS component of SCORM Cloud. To be candid, we haven’t entirely figured out how we should charge for the standalone LRS capability found in SCORM Cloud. So, our thinking is this: We’re going to wait a little while to figure that out, and during that time, externally-generated Tin Can statements will remain free. For example, statements that originate from our Tin Can bookmarklet will be stored at no cost. At this point, we commit to keep externally generated Tin Can statements free of charge until the formal release of Tin Can from ADL (currently rumored for the end of Q1 2013). One key distinction is that if you use SCORM Cloud to import a Tin Can package and then assign that course to a user via SCORM Cloud or one of its plugins, you will consume a registration, and registrations cost money. For pricing purposes, we treat Tin Can packages just like SCORM packages. Our best guess is that as we move beyond the formal release of Tin Can next year, we will probably base our pricing around the number of users for whom you report statements on. We want you to collect a huge pile of statements this year. We want you to collect a huge pile of statements going into the future. More Tin Can statements will make Tin Can more effective, and it will allow us to better support our users. We will find a reasonable way to relate the utility of those statements to your costs. At this point, though, we still feel it’s too early to specify that pricing. The post Pricing Tin Can in the Cloud appeared first on SCORM - .

Last week I called my favorite bike shop to schedule a tune up. Unfortunately, they are lots of people’s favorite store, so the wait time was a bit longer than I would have liked — like 2 weeks too long. So, then we started talking about what I really needed. It turns out that it was just a couple of minor adjustments, which only take about an hour. They managed to fit me in the same day. WINNING! Recently we had a customer that uses SCORM Cloud Dispatch ask us if there was a way to control how many people were accessing their course from the Client LMS. At the time there wasn’t — but you know what? It’s a great idea. So, we added some functionality that lets you set just how many users can access your course from a Client LMS. (See how it works here). Why did we add this? Because someone asked and it made sense for that customer and many others. We love having these conversations because it helps us understand how people use our products and how we can make them more useful. Lesson learned? It never hurts to ask. We’re listening and welcome the requests and feedback.  Send them our way! The post We’re All Ears appeared first on SCORM - .

You already know that Tin Can is going to change our corner of the world (and maybe a few other parts of the world as well). We’re leading the charge, but we’ve only just begun. We’ve got a pile of opportunity in front of us just waiting to be tapped and we need your help to turn vision into reality. If you’re the right person for any of these positions, come have some fun and change the world with us. Software Developer We’re always looking for amazing software developers and we’ll probably hire as many as we can get our hands on over the next few months. Quality Ombudsman We’re looking for a particularly anal-retentive form of geek to push us to use best practices, ensure we’re testing the right things with every release and squash bugs with vengeance. UX Designer / Ombudsman We’re a bunch of developers who think we can do design, but we don’t do a good job. We need a pro. A tireless advocate for the end user, an advocate for simplicity, an advocate for taste and elegance. Start here for more information about these jobs and why Rustici Software is the best place you will ever work. The post We’re Hiring - Come Build the Future With Us appeared first on SCORM - .

First impressions are important, there’s no denying that. Most people that I see in my day-to-day life only see what I wear, and that usually includes what Jena and I refer to as "a good ol’ pair of jeans." A good pair of jeans is a wonderful thing. If you’ve ever found the perfect pair for you, then you know exactly what I mean. Finding good jeans used to be a real struggle for me. I knew what I wanted, but I just couldn’t make it happen. I finally found my process, and it was well worth the wait. My wife, Ashlee, knows how to pick out the best jeans. Sounds un-manly, but I’m not one to deny a good process once I find it. About once a year, I sit in the fitting room and she throws 3-4 pairs to me. Two of them are perfect. I buy them, and I wear them out. Now, the perfect pair, right off the shelf might still need some work. I’m okay with spending a pretty penny on the perfect pair, then getting them tailored to the perfect length. I’ll wear these jeans a lot. It’s worth taking the time to make sure that they’re exactly how I want them. Why is this important? Because every day I come in contact with loads of people that I don’t talk to, but they’re people that still sum me up only on the basis of how I appear to them. This analogy, for Rustici Software, is like having over 2,000 unique people walk past us on the sidewalk every day and make snap judgements about us based on what they see. …except in our case, it’s unique visitors to our websites. It’s worth it to take the time to tailor our sites to be perfect for our company — our sites are how we’re judged by those 2,000 people that pass us every day on the sidewalk. Just like the perfect pair of jeans isn’t measured only by the perfect inseam, the perfect color or the perfect placement of the pockets, a website is much more than just design. Are you telling a story with your site? Are you keeping things interesting for those that visit your site? Are you creating flashy things that just get in the way of who you are? Our goal is to create sites that are transparent and helpful. Sites that don’t waste the time of our visitors. Sites that say "just by looking at our blue jeans, you can tell that we’ve done the work to make sure that you’re getting helpful, accurate information — we’re here to help, and we’re not here to waste your time." No matter how much time and effort it takes, we don’t need bedazzled fanciness, we just need what’s right for us and for our customers. To see our latest fitting, check out TinCanAPI.com. Tin Can is the next generation of SCORM, and we’ve spent a lot of time trying to make it easy for you to understand. The post A good pair of jeans… appeared first on SCORM - .