Hi, I’m Philip Hutchison, aka @pipwerks. Thanks for visiting!

pipwerks.com (est. 2006) is my labor of love, dedicated to e-learning development, with a focus on hand-built, do-it-yourself code using standards, modern best practices, and open-source libraries. I’ve spent the better part of two decades absorbing the intricacies of accessible web development, e-learning development, and learning management systems, and have tried to document some of my experiences along the way.

Featured

General

Rules for Work and School

I thought I’d type up a quickie list of things I believe in, as it relates to my profession or my kids’ schooling; I’ll leave out politics, religion, the sad state of the music industry, Apple versus Adobe, and alien conspiracies.

General

Fear of sharing, fear of failing

Setty’s line “Smart people want to give their best” seems to be something of a passing thought in his post. I’d like to give it more attention, because I believe conscientious experienced folks have a fear of giving bad advice.

e-learning

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

What do you want *your* SCORM to do?

Most e-learning developers don’t care about SCORM and only (begrudingly) learn enough to get the job done. I don’t blame them. This brings up the never-ending question when it comes to using SCORM in courseware: What are you really trying to do with SCORM?

e-learning

Development standards for e-learning… a starting point

Understanding that we should be using standards and best practices throughout e-learning development, the question becomes “what standards and best practices should we follow?”

Here’s my attempt at outlining some basics.

I’m 100% positive I’ve missed a few things, and I’m pretty sure not everyone will agree with my statements. Why not join in and add your two cents?

Recent posts

General

Using Scraper on RetroPie

Emulation Station’s scraper is hit-or-miss. Here are my notes on using Steven Selph’s Scraper instead.

Opinion

If you’re looking for my SCORM wrappers or other open-source projects, head on over to my GitHub page