Lake Mary, FL - 10 July 2006 The IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS) announced that a demonstration developed by Giunti Labs, Cisco Systems, and MIT was chosen as demonstrating the highest impact application of learning technology standards at IMS's annual conference held June 19-22 at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. The "Medical Content from Distributed Repositories" demonstrator was selected from a field of six finalists. The evaluation committee consisted of learning technology experts from the Open University, the California State University System, Cambridge University, the University of Wisconsin Madison, National Institute of Multimedia Education of Japan, and the Educational Testing Service.

At the heart of this year's winner was the learn eXact learning content management system from Giunti Labs. The demonstration showed how medical learning materials can be created from a variety of sources and then stored in one or more Internet-accessible digital repositories. A brokering service then allows instructors and learners to discover these resources from across the federated set of repositories. The lessons can then be harvested by a variety of learning management systems and mobile devices using Open Service Interface Definitions (OSIDs) provided by the Open Knowledge Initiative project at MIT. The networking infrastructure backbone provided by Cisco Systems included the Application & Content Networking System (ACNS), which provides technology to store and deliver rich file formats regardless of bandwidth constraints, key to enabling the multimedia content that is becoming the standard in online learning.

Other organizations that were among the teams in the finalist group were IVIMEDS, UK NHS Radiology Integrated Training Initiative, the Open Group, University of Koblenz-Landau, Open University Netherlands, Leverage Meaningful Solutions, Bedford Freeman and Worth Publishers, Apple, HarvestRoad, ANGEL Learning, Blackboard, Sakai, Pearson Education, University of Michigan, Advanced Distributed Learning Partnership Lab Australia, the Centre For Educational Technology Interoperability Standards United Kingdom, the European Institute for e-Learning, and the Learning Systems Architecture Laboratory Carnegie Mellon University.

IMS also announced that the organization will be recognizing a greater number of finalists and winners in several categories of learning impact at next year's annual conference renamed to "Learning Impact 2007", to be held April 16-19 in Vancouver. The nomination process for next year's awards will begin in August 2006.

"We are at the very beginning of an exciting future in the application of technology to enhance learning," remarked Rob Abel, CEO of IMS. "It is important for those who invest in technology in the educational and training contexts to assess and understand how their investments are addressing today's critical challenges of capacity, access, cost, and effectiveness. The purpose of our new Learning Impact program is to focus on this issue to enable institutions and corporations to invest in improving learning first and foremost."

About IMS Global Learning Consortium
IMS/GLC is the leading advocacy group encouraging the growth and impact of learning technology worldwide. IMS/GLC is a global, nonprofit, member organization that provides leadership in shaping and growing the learning industry through community development of standards, promotion of innovation, and research into best practices. For more information visit www.imsglobal.org.

For More Information:
Please contact:
Lisa Mattson at lmattson@imsglobal.org

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