Accolade for Giunti Labs’ NovaRes: the ‘New Thing’ in Educational Resources mobile, virtual and loca

Giunti Labs was named the ‘most innovative technology demonstrator’ at the OpeniWorld (OiW) event in New Orleans, USA, recently. The event, which was organised by OKI, followed the annual MERLOT conference and, according to Stephan Thieringer, Giunti Labs’ COO for North America: "Giunti Labs’ ’NovaRes: the New Thing in Educational Resources Management‘ product attracted great interest from industry colleagues and from potential collaborators among the vendors at the event."

The OiW committee selected eight software systems for evaluation, from organisations including Apple, the University of Washington and the National Autonomous University of Mexico as well as Giunti Labs. These products addressed the key issues of shareable and transparent identity management; easy and personal course information management; platform independent learning, and convenient and ubiquitous access to online content.

The Giunti Labs’ NovaRes demonstrator impressed the OiW judges and attendees alike with its use of interoperability specifications to enhance learning by blending standards based mobile learning in the real world with learning experiences in virtual worlds.

Imagine being able to place images from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on the walls of a virtual walk-through gallery. Giunti Labs didn't just imagine such a scenario, Giiunti Labs delivered it using learn eXact’s LCMS technologies and OKI Osids based extensions.

At OiW, Giunti Labs, Europe's leading vendor of e-learning and mobile learning content management solutions, revealed The NovaRes Educational Resources Management demonstrator which introduced delegates to Giunti Labs’ e-learning content management platform, learn eXact™, extended with a multi-vendor Service Orientated Architecture. NovaRes enables e-learning authors and publishers to integrate new generation mobile, virtual and rich media learning experiences within their streamline e-learning architectures.

According to Giunti Labs’ Thieringer, in the authoring and creation process, NovaRes can demonstrate interoperability with:
• Back-end pre-existing repositories and/or federations of learning assets repositories, such as Merlot, Ariadne, Lornet, Dspace and LionShare
• Intermediate content brokerage solutions, such as the Calstate Digital marketplace
• Front end delivery solutions, such as Moodle™, Sakai™, Blackboard™ and/or WebCT

"NovaRes uses a combination of e-learning content packaging standards, such as IMS and SCORM, as well as query and publishing interfaces such as OKI OSIDs, SQI and SRW, to layer the NovaRes blueprint on top of pre-existing e-learning architectures," he said.

The demonstration at OiW focused on a specific use of the NovaRes Architecture, named NovaArs - The New Face of Art - in art education scenarios. These included how:
• Art content authors and publishers can create advanced learning objects with Giunti Labs’ LCMS System and Authoring Tools, accessing distributed collections to harvest, broker, create and index standard contents to be then pushed and/or pulled to and from both commercial and open source LMS solutions.
• Advanced instructional designers can use these standard Learning Objects within new Collaborative Learning Worlds, Mobile devices and Location Based Navigation Systems to prepare a fully immersive blended learning experience.
• Students can access the scenarios created by a blending of web-based platforms and tools and a collection of mobile devices, such as Windows Mobile™M, BlackBerry™, Symbian™ smart phones and PDAs, to search and deliver standard contents while accessing Open DRs in the federation.

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Notes for Editors

About NovaRes

NovaRes includes:
• indexing of learning resources based on visual taxonomy maps for skills and topics mapping
• location detection of learning resources using a combination of RFID, Wi-Fi and GPS positioning technologies provided by leading technology partners such as Microsoft and Cisco
• delivery of learning resources on new generation mobile devices such as Sony Ericsson and Sprint Symbian™ phones, Blackberry™ mailers and Windows Mobile™ PDAs
• rapid and massive production of Virtual Learning Worlds with collaborative access to virtual learning experiences and artifacts

These features are transparently integrated into streamline e-learning delivery platforms. They complement and extend the streamline curricular experience provided today by existing academic and corporate e-learning infrastructures, while interoperating with tracking, reporting and management functionalities required by such streamline infrastructures.

About Giunti Labs

Giunti is unique in the international publishing industry.

In 1497, Giunti publishers and typographers in Florence, together with others in Venice, began modern book manufacturing. Over the years Giunti has built a ‘historical catalogue’ of huge dimensions, through a gradual process of ‘fusion’ of different publishers, but also through the creation of new brands, including Giunti Labs. Giunti Editore now includes 20 companies in the publishing sector.

Giunti Labs, which has its global headquarters in Italy and offices in London (UK), Frankfurt (Germany) and in Boston (US), provides a wide range of services, in response to any content, learning and knowledge management need, covering:
• Content production
• Research and development
• Technological solutions for content, learning & knowledge management
• Architectural and technological solutions for mobile & wireless
• Training and consulting

Giunti Labs provides the learn eXact® suite, Europe's leading e-learning and mobile learning content management technology. This suite is interoperable with all major vendor-driven and open source LMS and VLE solutions in the market including Plateau, Oracle, SumTotal, Saba, WebCT, Blackboard, Sakai, LRN and Moodle.

Moreover, Giunti Labs does not just adhere to the international standards relating to the LMS/LCMS world, it is one of the organisations that helps to determine and drive these standards: co-writing and developing them. Giunti Labs plays a key role in most of the international institutions for the definition of eLearning specifications (IEEE LTSC, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC36, CEN/ISSS WSLT, AICC, IMS, ADL-SCORM and OKI).

About Giunti Labs’ learn eXact® suite

Giunti Labs’ learn eXact is an e-learning and mobile learning content management system (LCMS) that enables users to create, manage and deliver content based on learning objects, XML, standards and international specifications. It delivers learning content to location-based mobile devices, interactive TV and wearable computer devices. Now the solution with its new eXact VLW plug in also delivers standard learning contents into 3D Virtual Worlds.

Further information from:
Angus Turpin, Giunti Labs, +44 (0) 7733 365063
Minna Leikas, Giunti Labs, +39 3489 399127
Bob Little, Bob Little Press & PR, +44 (0)1727 860405