As CETIS is transitioning to a new phase, the website will be changed to suit. To read more about the new service and site, check the latest newsitem. To keep abreast of the latest developments in service oriented learning technology, check out the e-learning focus site.

CETIS represents UK higher-education and further-education institutions on international learning technology standards initiatives.

• what are "learning technology standards"?
• why are these standards important?
• who else is involved?
• what products are supporting standards?

Relevant and interesting websites and articles

IBM and Novell announce support for open-source identity manager
Hot on the heels of more Microsoft anouncements about InfoPath (their new take on the identity management), come Novell and IBM with support for 'Higgins'- also a system that aims to enable cross-system and platform identity management and single sign-on by abstracting over many existing systems. It's a case of Meta-er than thou, basically. Interesting aspect is that it is both open source and based on / run by the very well regarded Eclipse foundation.

Tech-Ed Funding to be Tied to Copyright-Ed?
Bit of a parochial US issue (I hope), but interesting nonetheless. A california assemblyman wants any funding for educational technology to require teaching students how bad copyright infringement is. Obvious responses include a) he's been bought and b) cash for teaching my message is not a good idea. Beyond that, however, it shows the fairly extraordinary lenghts the copyright cartels are prepared to go to in order to convince the rest of us that making a copy of something is a crime. It looks as if the punishment part of the campaign is working in that fewer people use the p2p networks for fear of prosecution, but moves like the californian assemblyman's show that they're not making a lot of headway in making the public believe that it's wrong.

InfoCard on the way from Microsoft
It seems Microsoft learned the right lesson from the failure of Passport, its earlier effort in federated authentication. Rather than storing the crucial information about you on a server in Redmond, the new proposal -InfoCard- hands control back to the user. The technology is expected to come out with the new Windows variant (Vista) and its version of the IE browser (7). Says the MS fellow who designed the thing: "It’s important to note that all communications carried out by "InfoCard" use standards-based Web services protocols to ensure interoperability." They're spinning it furiously as the nice friendly interface on a open standards based meta identity system. Let's hope so.

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