Recombo And Bluestream Demonstrate New Approach To Personal Content Management At ADL Plugfest 7 And I/ITSEC
Recombo, the leading provider of content integration products and
services for the learning industry, and Bluestream, a leading
provider of XML data solutions, will demonstrate a new solution for
personal content management at the ADL Plugfest 7 in Orlando,
Florida. This is a standalone solution for content authors and
instructional designers that enables them to easily manage SCORM(TM)
content and create new courses from existing assets without the need
for an online server.
This is the first solution to give individual content authors and
instructional designers the ability to manage SCORM assets
themselves. It promises to dramatically increase productivity. The
hundreds of files created for a typical SCORM course are easily
organized, searched and repackaged. New functionality added to
Recombo Convertor(TM) includes the ability to create new SCORM
packages from multiple sources and a much more flexible way of
storing the XML content. Bluestream’s XStreamDB(TM) provides
full-text search on metadata and content.
SCORM(TM), the Shareable Content Object Reference Model, has been
developed by the Advanced Distributed Learning Network (ADL) to
promote more effective development and sharing of learning resources.
It is now the de facto standard for content delivered by learning
management systems. SCORM’s advantage is organizing learning
resources into well-defined collections is also its weakness. Under
SCORM, a single course is split up into many smaller sections
(content objects), each of which can be managed independently. This
enables use of the same content in many different ways, but there are
now hundreds, if not thousands, of different files to keep organized.
Recombo and Bluestream solve this problem.
“To date, content management systems for SCORM have been large, server
side-solutions. These are incredibly important, but there is also a
need for a lighter solution, one that can fit on the desktop and that
individual content authors and instructional designers can use to
manage the development of learning resources,” explains Recombo CEO,
Steven Forth. “I am delighted to be able to work with Bluestream, a
company at the heart of XML, to bring a content management solution
to the many people working with SCORM learning resources.”
The Recombo-Bluestream personal content management system makes it
possible to save content processed by Recombo’s Convertor(TM) tools
into a personal content repository running on Bluestream’s native XML
database, XStreamDB. Recombo automates SCORM conversion and content
chunking. It can easily turn one large document into a collection of
several hundred content objects. A course created in Microsoft Word
or PowerPoint can be converted into SCORM at the touch of a button
and then reorganized as a collection of content objects. Content can
be managed in a granular way, but all this power sometimes overwhelms
the user with detail. The personal content management system provides
a solution. Content authors and instructional designers will use it
to manage the many different pieces of content that SCORM makes
available to them and to reorganize them into new resources.
The Recombo-Bluestream personal SCORM content management solution will
be demonstrated at the ADL Plugfest 7, which is being held in
Orlando, Florida, from December 2 to 5 in conjunction with I/ITSEC
(Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education
Conference). The conjunction of I/ITSEC with an ADL Plugfest is a
sign of SCORM’s growing maturity and a broader general interest in
ways to ensure that learning resources are reusable, accessible,
interoperable and durable.
“Recombo has been a leading developer of productivity tools for people
implementing XML content standards. Bluestream, for its part, was one
of the first companies to realize the importance of XML for
organizing and searching content. This partnership should bring great
benefits to people whose job it is to create and maintain first-class
learning resources,” notes Dr. David Vogt, Chief Research Officer at
the New Media Innovation Centre (NewMIC) in Vancouver, BC.
Bluestream President Jim Tivy adds, “We see SCORM as a very rich and
well-thought-out content organization mechanism that can be adapted
to many forms of delivery now and in the future. Bluestream’s
XStreamDB XML database product is very well positioned to play a
central role in SCORM persistence, querying and management. XML
databases have several advantages when it comes to SCORM’s content.
SCORM is an XML format and by using an XML database, we can preserve
the natural structure. We look forward to a continued partnership
with Recombo to deliver leading-edge SCORM content management
solutions.”
Recombo and Bluestream plan to commercialize this solution in the first
quarter of 2003. In the future, it will be possible to integrate this
desktop repository with leading SCORM metadata repository solutions,
such as that of Metasoft(TM) from Digital Creations Inc.
About Recombo Inc.
Recombo Inc. delivers products and solutions for content integration,
particularly for eLearning. The company has a new approach to
reducing the cost of managing multiple forms of content across the
enterprise. Staffed by a team of experts in content migration,
assurance and integration, Recombo currently does business in the
United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. Its business development
office is in Boston, MA, USA, and its product-development office is
in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Recombo currently partners
with THINQ, IBM, Adobe, Questionmark and Digital Concepts.
For more information, please contact Brad McPhee, VP Operations, at
604-736-2272 ext. 151, or visit www.recombo.com for product and
company details.
About Bluestream Database Software Corp.
Bluestream is a leading provider of XML data management products and
solutions for e-business and content management. The company’s
flagship product is XStreamDB, a cross-platform, native XML database
supporting XQuery, Schemas, and full-text search, with a complete,
transaction-based architecture. Founded in 1997 by Jim Tivy,
Bluestream is an innovator in data storage and access, delivering
standards-based, cross-platform servers and components for enterprise
and desktop applications. Jim Tivy is a member of the W3C working
group on XQuery.
Visit Bluestream on the Web at www.bluestream.com.