Before we bought 30 inch monitors for everybody, we used to print out all of the SCORM specs as they came out. The hard copy made them a whole lot easier to digest even though it meant the slaughter of many innocent trees. In unpacking the last boxes in our new office today I came across all of them. It makes a nice visual for why it makes sense to work with Rustici Software if you’re serious about providing standards support. What’s in the pile: SCORM 1.1 SCORM 1.2 SCORM 1.3 ("first edition" of SCORM 2004) SCORM 2004 2nd Edition AICC HACP AICC PENS IMS Content Packaging IMS Common Cartridge MedBiquitous Healthcare LOM

There is a trophy here at Rustici — the Donnelly Cup. Reserved for the lowest rung on the ping-pong ladder, the Donnelly Cup serves as a reminder to the owner that there is always room for improvement. The Cup changes hands often, and currently resides in Joe’s office. Joe prominently displays the trophy and will challenge anyone to a duel to share its inspiration. Another trophy also appeared at our offices recently —SCORM Cloud earned a Gold Medal in the Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Technology Awards for Best Advance in Social Learning Technology. When we capture a gold medal we like to celebrate, and we’d like to say "thank you" to Brandon Hall and our fellow winners. We are in good company on a list which includes many of our customers. What’s even more exciting than our new bling are the possibilities that SCORM Cloud offers to advance social learning technology. It allows you to turn virtually any online platform into a track-able learning environment. Whether it’s using the pre-built WordPress plugin to turn your blog into a full blown training source, or developing your own app on top of our API, SCORM Cloud allows you to bring learning to where learners live. So while the Donnelly Cup recognizes the potential for ping pong greatness, we see similar opportunities with SCORM Cloud to inspire new applications within eLearning. If you have an inspiring use of SCORM Cloud, share it with us or let us know what you’d like to see it do next.

These days, with one click, you can buy a song from iTunes and automatically sync it to your iPod. Remember how long it used to take to buy a CD, burn the songs to your computer and transfer them to your MP3 player? Just think about how much time you saved from this one little improvement- more time to listen to your music, which is what you wanted to do in the first place. What if you could do the same thing with your content? It’s not always a simple process to import a SCORM package into an LMS. It may take 3 steps, or in some cases a dozen or more clicks to publish that course into your LMS. Multiply that by a few courses, and this time and effort adds up quickly. Imagine a tool that lets you export a course directly from your authoring tool into your LMS. One click puts that new course directly where it needs to go. Here is where PENS comes in. PENS (Package Exchange Notification System) simplifies the process of content publishing by automating the transfer of content between systems. While SCORM standards make content and systems work together, PENS takes it one step further. Think of it as rocket fuel for delivering content. As standards geeks, we get excited when specs emerge that further improve the efficiency of how content and systems play together. We see great potential with PENS and are eager to see its benefits realized by the larger eLearning community. So, how can you get started? We recently deployed PENS support in two of our products- SCORM Cloud and SCORM Engine. Now you can publish content directly into your Cloud account or SCORM Engine LMS. Check out how it works. If you’re using an Authoring Tool, see if your provider supports PENS. Have you already adopted PENS? If so, tell us about your experience in the comments section below.

The morning started out like any other.  David decided to unwrap a package of Orbit gum.  We’ve been headed down a path toward implementing a bit of BLTI from IMS (Basic Learning Tools Interoperability), and so we have a copy of Dr. Chuck’s book on our island.  (Dr. Chuck’s tattoo has been admired many times, but today, we noticed the back of the bookjacket.) Well, we really started wondering why Chuck was yelling the whole time.  We decided that we would take the opportunity to reenact this important moment.  And if we were going to have that moment, we might as well video it, so that we could share it with you, instead of just the guy who rode by on his bike. Enjoy.  

Back in 2007, I got curious about SCORM 2004 adoption and pulled some metrics about how people were using SCORM. Well, I got curious again, but this time I took it to the next level. We’ve just published a feed of SCORM Stats that will be updated nightly. For SCORM geeks like us, these stats present a useful snapshot into how the real work is using SCORM. Go ahead and bookmark it and come back every now and then to see how things evolve. Let’s take a look at SCORM then and now. SCORM Versions SCORM Versions Then SCORM Versions Now Then: SCORM 2004 made up about 50% of the content that was being uploaded into Test Track. Now: SCORM 2004 makes up about 30-35% of the content uploaded into SCORM Cloud. Conclusion: SCORM 2004 remains relevant for a significant population, but it’s adoption and usage has not increased over the years. Adoption appears to be flat. The decrease since 2007 is probably related to the more mainstream adoption of SCORM Cloud vs the early adopters using SCORM Test Track in 2007. SCORM Versions By User SCORM Versions By User Then SCORM Versions By User Now Then: About 40% of users were uploading SCORM 2004 content. Now: About 40% of users are uploading SCORM 2004 content. Conclusion: SCORM 2004 adoption remains flat. Users SCORM Test Track Users Then SCORM Cloud Users Now Then: About 3000 people cared enough about SCORM to try out our little application. Now: 21,000 people have given SCORM Cloud a whirl. Conclusion: Our little SCORM Test Track experiment was a hit. That’s nice for us, but for the broader SCORM community it show just how widespread SCORM’s adoption is. Twenty-one THOUSAND people are deep enough into SCORM to use an application like SCORM Cloud, with 500 more signing up every month. SCORM’s adoption is broader than I think anybody realizes. It is the industry workhorse. Some other stats in that vein: About 20,000 unique visitors visit scorm.com every month…that’s 20,000 more people every month who are interested in SCORM enough to go read about it. About 12,000 courses are imported into SCORM Cloud every month. Twelve thousand courses, that is a lot of SCORM content being tested! Realizing the -ilities (multiple SCOs)?   Then: Use of Multi-SCO content   Now: The use of multi-SCO content Now: Number of SCOs in Courses Then: About 35% of SCORM 2004 content took advantage of multiple-SCO functionality. Now: The percentage of content using more than one SCO has increased dramatically with each new edition of SCORM 2004. Conclusion: The improvements in each SCORM 2004 Edition have been useful in making sequencing easier to use and more effective. Or, conversely, the people who use sequencing most heavily tend to gravitate to the latest edition with the most robust functionality.   Realizing the -ilities (use of sequencing)? Then: Use of Sequencing Now: Use of Sequencing Conclusion: The use of sequencing remains similar, but it increases with the later SCORM 2004 Editions….consistent with the conclusions above.

We write about working here more often than we ever post that we’re hiring. Small company, only so many slots to fill, yada, yada, yada. Seriously, when you have a great place to work, who wants to leave? 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.

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.  

Saw this great info-graphic today from Knewton. There are plenty of reasons to be discouraged by the state of e-learning today, but when you take a look at the bigger picture there are plenty of reasons for exuberant optimism as well. 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

Moodle has long been a stalwart open source LMS. In fact, they just celebrated their 9th birthday. In that time their platform has matured and progressed from version 1.0 to the most recent release which now starts with a ‘2’. When we launched SCORM Cloud, we pre-built a few integrations we thought made sense, including a Moodle mod. Well that was back in the early days of 1.9.  For those running 1.9, the SCORM Cloud mod allows you to play SCORM 2004 content on your Moodle site. In v2.0 Moodle revised their plugin architecture. Until now, there wasn’t a mod for the 2.0 platform that could support SCORM 2004. You asked (and asked again), and we listened. The updated SCORM Cloud mod for Moodle 2.x is ready and now available. Follow the steps listed here to get started. Can’t stand the wait next time? The SCORM Cloud integrations we’ve created are all open source and freely available on Github.

On Wednesday, we learned of a security vulnerability in the SCORM Cloud WordPress Plugin we developed. WordPress has a code auditor that picked it up and flagged the plugin. Thanks to their quick notification, we were able to fix the vulnerability and have published an updated plugin. If you are using the WordPress SCORM Cloud plugin, we recommend that you get the latest version (1.0.7) ASAP. If you ever notice a security problem in any of our software, please let us know so we can get it patched up. Also, all of the SCORM Cloud Apps we’ve developed are open source and publicly available on Github for you to enhance…don’t feel like you need to wait for us if there is something you need. Details of the vulnerability.

SCORM is over 10 years old. A while ago, ADL (the keepers of SCORM) asked us to research what the next-generation e-learning specification could/should look like. We’ve been gathering information from the entire e-learning community about what you’d like to see in the next specification. Many of you already know about this, and many of you have participated. We have our solution — it’s the Tin Can API. The Tin Can API solves a lot of problems that older specifications suffered from, but it also adds new capabilities, new business cases, and new ways of handling content. The Tin Can API fuses a decade of collective e-learning experiences with a decade of technological advances. We’ve created a place for you to go and tell us what we got right and what we missed. Click on the video below to learn more about the Tin Can API.   See how the Tin Can API works and what it can do.  

We put a lot of effort into making scorm.com a useful and informative site. We want to be THE place that people go to for help with SCORM, be they paying customers or not. 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!

We get asked all the time, "What is an LMS?" So, here’s a challenge… express it as simply, as elementally as you can. Here’s my effort: A tool that authenticates students, connects them to a topic, as well as each other, and provides the tools to efficiently deliver, track and assess the learning process. - (Think you can do it better using only 140 characters? Step up and leave a comment…) We’ve been pondering different applications and how they apply to that definition. And I can’t stop coming back to Facebook as a great candidate for an LMS of the future. A tool that authenticates students…   …connects them to a topic…   …as well as each other…   This is where SCORM Cloud comes in. Courses could be hosted on SCORM Cloud and delivered via Facebook. …and provides the tools to efficiently deliver, track and assess the learning process. Assessments and tracking could also be integrated:     Thinking about what could be is something we do a lot… Lately several of us have often discussed what SCORM Cloud + Facebook could be. I thought it’d be a good idea to expand the discussion and bring our followers into the mix. Apps in Facebook are nothing new, and they’re the future of the platform: The next five years will be defined by apps and the depth of social engagement. -Mark Zuckerberg at F8 2011   The social learning platform has created thousands of successful virtual farms and Vills. While many of the popular apps currently on Facebook are games, the Facebook population seems to be underutilized for eLearning. Students and Facebook have a healthy relationship — the site’s popularity was born from college students. I’m willing to make the argument that the blend of eLearning and the Facebook environment would be a useful marriage. Facebook advantages: 800+ million users (and growing) Easy to manage people and groups Users are loyal, familiar and comfortable with Facebook Streamlined registration and management process Frequent log-ins, easily accessible across platforms and devices Every month, more than 500 million people use an app on Facebook or experience Facebook Platform on other websites More than 7 million apps and websites are integrated with Facebook By using Facebook to facilitate learning with students and instructors, developers could create a fast and intuitive way to group students and deploy courses. Learning within Facebook provides a platform students are comfortable and familiar with. Relationships formed via a Facebook-based experience could continue past the life of the course, creating a more genuine social experience than traditional eLearning has been able to give. The possibilities of a Learning App within Facebook are exciting to imagine and one I think could become the next big movement of eLearning. Arguably, this rush to manage learners within Facebook will start soon, and I’m excited to see it begin. We’ve built our SCORM Cloud to be flexible and adaptable with this scenario in mind. We’ve seen several integrations of our SCORM Cloud. So far it has been blended into Moodle, Sakai, Dokeos, Ilias, WordPress and Google Apps. Instead of reinventing the learning platform, just plug our SCORM Cloud into Facebook and move on. Facebook is the next step, and one we’re excited to see someone take. Our SCORM Cloud can relieve the pain of hosting content, managing courses, tracking assessments and reporting grades. Facebook will manage students — all a developer needs to do is plug the two together. We’re open to ideas on how we can make this process easier. Group discussions, wall posts, notifications, real-time chat with classmates, leader boards… the Facebook platform offers plenty of elements that can be combined to create something cool. What could be within this solution keeps my mind racing. I hope that some momentum for this develops soon. So the logical question is, "If an e-learning Facebook app is such a great idea, why not do it yourself?" We have built the toolkit that can make this app possible… we’ve got a lot of development projects in cue. We’ve made it obvious we’re hiring, great ideas like SCORM Cloud + Facebook are why. If this sounds cool and you’d like to jump in and create a Facebook integration, go for it. Where it goes from here is up to you. Are you willing to take the leap and become the first to navigate these waters? We know this process takes time and effort. We’re willing to lend a hand, let’s discuss what that could look like by dropping a comment. If you’re interested in working with us to make this happen, email me — chris.tompkins@scorm.com. Some images from: benstein & FindYourSearch

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.

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.

  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.

The best company you can have, in a strange place, is a map. -MacGyver I’ve seen every episode of MacGyver… most more than twice. When thinking about the best way for users to get what they want out of our eLearning Atlas, MacGyver’s advice came to mind. As each of you will undoubtedly recall in "The Gauntlet," the opening sequence has Mac stealing the bad-guy’s evil-plan-map. Without a weapon at hand, he fashions the map into various tools to aid his escape. He finds no fewer than five ways to use the map, getting away unscathed and saving the day. I’ll never skip an opportunity to watch MacGyver, here’s the clip: [sniplet macguyver]   While escaping, Mac explains, The great thing about a map, it can get you in and out of places in a lot of different ways. That’s the great thing about the eLearning Atlas, it can get you to the right solution, in a lot of different ways. In no real order, here are some quick ways to fashion our map into a useful tool: Moodle: There are plenty of products and services built around the platform. This is a good example of how our tags quickly point towards a group of products. Rustici customers: We often get asked to provide a list of our customers. Until now, we really didn’t have a list to point people to. While not all the products using our software behind the scenes want to be known, this search gives you a good look at the many places you can find our stuff. You can find our stuff in all sorts of places, here are the commercially available products that fit in the Atlas. Use any of these knowing you have the best SCORM support available (That’s my biased opinion… I’m a paid representative). LMS products powered by SCORM Engine: SCORM Engine is behind the scenes of LMSs everywhere. Products that use SCORM Driver to create content: Some of the best content out there is made with SCORM Driver. Products running SCORM Cloud: Our API allows companies to use our scalable SaaS product to handle the deployment of courses. iOS: Check out all the entries that are taking learning to the iPad and iPhone. By selecting a tag and adding keywords, you can find specific products quickly. Cloud-based solutions: We’re not the only ones building learning solutions in the cloud. Facebook: I’ve discussed it before, Facebook is a cool place to learn. Here’s a place to start seeing how others have begun to use the tool for learning. Collaborative Authoring: Want to work together to create a course? This list combines a tag with a product type to display Authoring Tools that can be used in a team environment. Have you MacGyver-ed the Atlas in ways I haven’t thought of? Leave a comment and share. As we point out at the bottom of every page on the eLearning Atlas, we mess up sometimes. If we’ve mixed up some tags or need to optimize a few entries to make sure they land on the right custom search, let me know. As any fan knows, MacGyver episodes always end with a parting piece of advice. In this sequence Mac concludes with, Just goes to show ya, a good map will always get you where you want to go. I couldn’t agree more.

Brought to you by SCORM.com, the e-learning standards experts.It’s the start of a new year and almost impossible to escape the idea of resolving to do something different (travel more!), better (exercise everyday!), or not at all (no more pizza!). Given our love of cookies and ice cream, chances are slim that diets are high on anyone’s list around here. So rather than focus on deleting things from our daily lives, we’ll take the ‘do something better’ angle. First up in 2012 is adding some new features to SCORM Cloud. SCORM Cloud does many things, but at its core, it delivers training. Until now, you could import courses, share them with learners and track the results. SCORM Cloud even lets you send your content to another LMS (but that’s another story). We thought it would be kind of cool to include a couple of tools that let you add SCORM content within SCORM Cloud. Check out what we came up with: ScoTube- -Want to use video in your training? ScoTube automagically wraps your video with all of the SCORMy stuff needed. You can use a video from YouTube, or upload your own video file. Either way, one click delivers a SCORM course that’s ready to play in SCORM Cloud. We’ll even let you export it to use outside of SCORM Cloud, if you really want to. Quizzage- Need an easy-to-use tool that creates simple quizzes and surveys? Quizzage is just that. Create your questions (there are 5 types to pick from), set your scoring and learner feedback options, and you’re ready to go. You can deliver your quizzes right from SCORM Cloud. Or even export them from SCORM Cloud if you must. So far, I have created quite a training curriculum for my friends and family- "How to Wash a Cat", "Cha Cha Slide 101", "Playing the Ukelele" and "Mastering Flip Turns". Feel free to check them- just click on any of the titles, to go right to the training. I also thought it might be fun to build a quiz to test your knowledge on some of the cool things SCORM Cloud can do. Try it here and see what you know. Want to give it a try? Just go over to SCORM Cloud. In less than 5 minutes you can build your courses and even share them with your learners. And since it’s through SCORM Cloud, you can even build your own and try it out for free. Brought to you by SCORM.com, the e-learning standards experts.

When SCORM Cloud outages happen, we drop everything until service is restored. A few of us go into "let the world know that we’re working on it" mode, and the SCORM Cloud developers glue their eyes to their screens and wrists to their desks until the outage is resolved. That’s what happened yesterday. SCORM Cloud relies on a few third-party systems to do what it does. Yesterday, a problem was exposed by an outage of one of these systems and SCORM Cloud services were unreliable for about an hour. Typically if a server is unavailable, it will send a "server unavailable" message that we handle appropriately and with no SCORM Cloud outages. Yesterday, the server wasn’t sending anything to SCORM Cloud, not even a "server unavailable" message. We didn’t have anything in place to handle this particular instance, so SCORM Cloud kept trying to connect to the server, opening too many connections and causing failures. We now have code in place so that if the server ever stops responding again, SCORM Cloud will handle it as a "server unavailable" situation — one that we can handle with no problems at all. Our developers don’t have any direct control over how others handle their servers and systems so we can’t directly prevent errors. What we can do (and what we’ve done) is make it so that SCORM Cloud is able to handle a wider range of errors. This translates to more SCORM Cloud up time. If you ever need to see the status of SCORM Cloud (including up time data,) check out our Cloud Status page. You can also follow @SCORMCloud on Twitter for SCORM Cloud news and updates.

We’re hiring a Juggler. No, we don’t need circus skills, but we do need somebody who can keep a lot of balls in the air. Project Tin Can is generating an enormous amount of opportunity and we need somebody to help us keep moving it forward. The job involves bits of product management, project management, sales, marketing and entrepreneurship. We’re also looking for one or two more developers. Start here if you’re interested.

Birthdays are fun around Rustici Software. We all get ice cream- and not just a scoop from a big bucket of vanilla or chocolate. Each person gets to order their very own combination from Cold Stone Creamery (shameless product placement for free ice cream). Given the choice, we each end up with a cup custom made just for each of us. Whether it’s Mike’s Cookie Doughn’t You Want Some™ with Cake Batter ice cream, or Jena’s choice (which usually entails her picking out some of the toppings she ordered), it’s a personalized cup that has the flavors and toppings for each taste. We like to offer the same choices to our customers too. We understand that one platform does not suit everyone. That’s why we built many SCORM Cloud integrations- to meet different tastes and needs. Some flavors we offer include WordPress, Google Apps, Moodle, and now Drupal. The newest addition to the line up, the SCORM Cloud Drupal integration, is one that we are particularly excited about. The module is the result of a collaborative effort between a driven client, a knowledgeable developer within the Drupal community, and our own SCORM Cloud experts. Much like Cold Stone, Drupal offers endless customization options with over 2,000 modules to pick from, letting you build a site that meets all of your needs. You have probably seen Drupal in action as it runs millions of sites, including my favorite, The Onion. Looking for a way to sell access to your courses hosted on SCORM Cloud? The Ubercart module in Drupal offers shopping cart capabilities that now make this a reality. Want to customize the SCORM Cloud player? You can apply your own style sheet through the Content Creation Kit (CCK). Don’t see what you’re looking for? Reach out to the active Drupal community to develop even more functionality. Since we can’t share our ice cream tradition with you (as much as we’d love to), we can offer more flavors of SCORM Cloud. Don’t see your flavor listed here? Just ask us- the combinations are endless.

Over a year ago, we started working with ADL to figure out where SCORM should go next. There were many roads that ADL could have gone down, and they’ve chosen ours — Project Tin Can. We’ve been building and refining the Tin Can spec and our prototypes for a while now, and it’s time for you to see what we’ve been doing. It’s also time for you to share your thoughts on Project Tin Can with ADL and find out how you can contribute. You’re all invited to join ADL on Thursday, April 5 at 2:30pm ET for the Project Tin Can kick off meeting. You can join right from your computer. Sign up here. You can count on hearing our voices there, too. ADL will be sharing details about Tin Can, the schedule for release, and many other things as well. If you want to get started before then (or just want to talk shop,) email us at tincan@scorm.com. We’re happy to help you become an early adopter of Project Tin Can.

When it comes to getting something for free, I’ll do just about anything. Last summer, we had a new ice cream store open in East Nashville. The night before they "officially" opened, they were offering free ice cream. I stood in line for close to 2 hours in 90 plus degree weather in June for two scoops of ice cream. It was by far the most delectable ice cream I had ever eaten, but ice cream none the less. You may think that’s a bit extreme but I like to think of it as getting a good deal. Helps me sleep at night, anyways. We really like you, so we’ve decided to give you something pretty awesome for FREE and you don’t have to stand in line or do anything crazy for it. All you have to do is agree not to make money from it. Deal? We’ve recently released SCORM Driver, free for non-commercial use. You heard right! You can now convert your courses to SCORM and AICC for free. That means there will be more really conformant SCORM and AICC content packages in the world, which makes us really happy. Put simply, SCORM Driver wraps your content in SCORM (or AICC) and allows it to work in practically any LMS. The only thing that we ask of you in return is that you only use the free version of SCORM Driver for non-commercial purposes. Wondering what we mean by non-commercial? Check this out. To get started, check out the Quickstart Guide, and download SCORM Driver from the Add Content page in SCORM Cloud. Then you are on your way making some awesome SCORM conformant courses. If you have questions along the way, let us know. We’ll do our best to answer them. Want to use your courses commercially? No problem, we’ll just need to talk about licensing.

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 - .