Earlier in the summer I blogged about the content transcoder project CETIS and Knowlege Integration are developing. The idea is to create a cloudbased service which can convert the most common eLearning content formats.
At the SALTIS meeting yesterday (9 October) Neil and Hana from KI gave a demonstration of a beta version of the transcoder at the SALTIS meeting in Coventry.
Hana uploaded an OU Common Cartridge to the transcoder service, chose what conversion she wanted (in this case Common Cartridge to SCORM) and then the service went to work. She was notified via email with a url where the newly converted package was available for download. The whole process took less than 5 minutes (the network connection was a bit slow).
The project is still in the early phase of development and currently can only convert between convert to/from IMS CP 1.1.4, SCORM 2004 and IMS CC 1.0 however by the end of the project (March 09) the service will offer conversion to/from IMS CP v1.1.3; v1.1.4; v1.2; IMS CC1.0;SCORM 1.2; SCORM 2004. At this stage it looks unlikely that this initial development will be able to include platform specific transforms. However such transforms are possible within service architecture – as ever it’s really just a question of time and resources allocation. As the code is open source maybe someone else will want to pick up on that and develop further or you never know, we may even get a bit more funding to extend the project.
If you are interested in the project and have packages that you would like to convert, please get in touch as we are looking for as many testers of the service as possible. More information on the project is available from the CETIS wiki.
This tool sounds very interesting. Unfortunatly I did not find a demo link somewhere. Is it possible to see the Transcoder “in action” somewhere?
I am working for the University of Zurich and we developed a tool called eLML, the eLesson Markup Language (www.elml.org). Now eLML has another approach: The content is created based on an pedagocical XML structure and then transformed into the final format. This can be IMS CP or SCORM but it can also be PDF (using Formatting Objects or LaTeX) or the Open Document Format (ODF). So using XML we have clean separation between content and layout and therefore can transform the content into different layouts and output formats. So in the end the goal is the same as you describe it for the transcoder service: the possibility to use the same content within different environments (LMS).
Hi Joel
There should be a public url available very soon. I’ll post details as soon as it is available.
Best wishes
Sheila