Interoperability

From the start of the development of PebblePad we have been working with CETIS (the Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards) to not only ensure that PebblePad is as interoperable as possible but also to help influence the developing standards.

LEAP2A Specification

This specification is intended to cover the representation of several kinds of information, centred around individuals, who collect, create and use their own information. Much of this information is typically of the kind that can be used for individuals’ learning, but rather than being learning materials authored by an educator, the information covered by this specification is authored by the individuals themselves, about themselves. The individual, whether pupil, student, apprentice, employee or none of these, may be thought of as a learner for our purposes. If a learner reflects, on the information collected, or on other things, the expression of that reflection will be one kind of information that will take a natural place among the other kinds of information dealt with here.

Find out more about the LEAP2A Specification

New LEAP2A flyer now available: Download

The PebblePad team have been heavily involved at a technical level with the CETIS Learner Information Package group to help develop LEAP2a which is an ATOM based standard designed to support the transfer of eportfolio items between systems. This standard has now been adopted by other providers and offers an opportunity for users to move items between systems.

There are still challenges with working with standards in that not all systems are equal. Where PebblePad supports multipage webfolios with links to assets, as well as comments and feedback, other systems do not support such a wide range of facilities. So when you transfer items from PebblePad into other systems they may display differently. That is one of the reasons that we also support exporting items as HTML files or websites; this allows items to appear exactly as they would in PebblePad.

Another challenge is that the personal learning and eportfolio arena is moving ahead very quickly and standards naturally struggle to keep up with the pace of change. However, we are committed to full compliance with relevant standards as they emerge because we believe we need to support life–long learning for our users and that means making sure they can export and import records to and from other systems.

PebblePad 2.5.4 is LTI Basic Compliant

Being Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) Basic conformant means that organisations can link any similarly conformant system to PebblePad with very little effort. So for example, if you want to create a single sign on link from a VLE/LMS or portal as long as the system supports LTI Basic you can set this up very quickly and easily without the need to write code or install anything. You just need to have three pieces of information – the url of the two systems being linked, a shared secret and a key code generated by PebblePad. In less than 5 minutes you can set up single sign on, something that used to take days to achieve!

About Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI)

The LTI specification is a developing standard from IMS Global. LTI Basic is now available and Full LTI is due towards the end of 2011. This new Full version of the specification will enable us to develop a whole range of facilities within PebblePad⁺ to take advantage of information stored in other systems. For example creating Gateways based on a course in the VLE/LMS will be very straightforward. A couple of clicks and the gateway will be set up with all the group information automatically added to the Gateway, tutors will be added to the tutor group and students in the user group.
The great thing is that it doesn’t matter which VLE/LMS system you are using as long as it supports the specification PebblePad⁺ will be able to work with it.

More details from IMS Global