Fifteen / Fives #10

After spending quality time with my family and cousin, who is an
instructional design team manager and senior knowledge
engineer for SAIC (A goverment consulting firm) in VA, I
learned a few things that his team is doing that we all need
to be aware of now or when we start working.

1.  We should be familiar with the SCORM (Sharable Content
Object Reference Model) standards and design our courses to
contain stand alone learning objects that can be imported,
exported  and reused for different audiences and purposes
according to SCORM comformance guidelines.

Here is a link from the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL)
titled "Introduction to the SCORM for Instructional
Designers": http://www.adlnet.org/scorm/articles/3.cfm .

Here is some information on how to implement SCORM using a
dreamweaver extension called "L5 SCORM Producer for
Dreamweaver 8" from my project website:
http://www.coe.uga.edu/dev/twt/videoconferencing/SCORM/scorm.
html

2.  Another very important standard that we must all follow
today is developing XHTML comformant webpages.  The XHTML
family is the next step in the evolution of the Internet. By
migrating to XHTML today, content developers can enter the
XML world with all of its attendant benefits, while still
remaining confident in their content's backward and future
compatibility.

As instructional designers we have a responsiblity to at
least know about these standards and how to use them in
creating our programs. Here is an informative article about
XHTML1.0 from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C):
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/

3. Here is  a great resource by the W3C:
http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/existingtools.html for web
accessiblity.


I hope these tools interest you guys as much as they do to
me.  We need be always familiar with the newest standards in
developing instructional programs.