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Standards-friendy eLearning and Web development (HTML 5 version)

Posts tagged ‘standards’

Dear Apple and Adobe

Neither of you are choir boys, and I’m fed up with your bickering.

Speaking of IMS…

The IMS wants your personal information before they’ll let you read their public standards.

IMS issues press release for new e-learning interoperability standards

If the new standards are written as poorly as this press release, it’s going to be 1,000 pages of useless spec.

Best Practices in E-Learning

Someone recently posted a blog entry ranting about the use of the term “best practices” in our industry. I understand the frustration with thoughtless pronouncements about best practices, especially coming from people who may not know any better; it will often sound a lot like how like mom used to say “eat this, it’s good for you” without really knowing whether it’s true. However, there is a big difference between best practices in terms of learning theory — something that’s difficult to quantify and/or prove — and technology.

SCORM security (two kinds of SCORM people)

I’ve had a flurry of emails and messages regarding my SCORM cheat the past few days, and have received feedback from a number of well-regarded SCORM aficionados, some of whom contributed to the standard and helped make SCORM what it is today. This is wonderful, I’m very happy to hear from everyone, especially regarding such an engaging topic.

But as I hear more from these seasoned SCORM pros, I’ve made (what I believe to be) an interesting observation: there is a sharp division between die-hard SCORM developers and casual users. I suppose I’ve felt this way for a long time, but it’s really coming into focus this week. Let me try to define the camps.

Cheating in SCORM

I’m always surprised how little people talk about cheating in e-learning; maybe it’s a fear of revealing just how easy it can be. The fact is, SCORM — the most common communication standard in e-learning — is fairly easy to hack. I’ve whipped up a proof-of-concept bookmarklet that when clicked will set your SCORM course to complete with a score of 100 (works with both SCORM 1.2 and 2004).

Gotchas in Internet Explorer 8

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is at Release Candidate 1, which means it will be released very shortly. IE8 is a brand-new browser and will represent a considerable shift from IE7/IE6; it will follow standards more closely and will offer much improved CSS 2.1 support. However, because of some of these changes, it is also widely understood that IE8 might ‘break’ websites that have relied on IE-specific hacks targeted at previous versions if Internet Explorer.

Obfuscating email addresses, revisited

A while back, I posted my method for defeating spambots that harvest email addresses. This post is an update to that original method. It explores cleaner, less obtrusive code approaches and more accessible/usable HTML markup.

Constructive criticism for the new whitehouse.gov

The new whitehouse.gov site has received a lot of press since its unveiling a few days ago. Many have rightly given it kudos for bringing a modern sense of design and “Web 2.0″-style social practices to the White House. I agree that the new site is a big improvement, but upon looking under the hood, there are a number of things I’d have done differently. Here’s a quick-hit list (not comprehensive at all)…

SCORM resources

I recently emailed a shortlist of good SCORM development resources to a colleague, and figured I should probably post a list here, too. This is a quickie list, and I’m sure I’m leaving someone out. If you know of any resources I’ve missed, please add a link in the comments. This list is presented in no particular order.