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The IDEA 2008 events focusing on technology and education will include:

• IDEA Lab - an interoperability workshop aimed at education infrastructure implementers
• The Technology in Education Open Forum - Enabling Technology: Forging a Digital Future. A one and a half day open forum focusing on enabling technologies and infrastructure aimed at policy makers and educational designers responsible for education technology and vendors wishing to integrate their services into education infrastructure
• The IMS GLC Learning Impact Awards Australian Regional Finals recognizing outstanding applications of technology that address the most significant challenges facing the education community. The awards are unique for their recognition of the use of technology in the education context
• other recent developments in the application of learning teaching and research technologies in the education sector

IDEA 2008 is sure to be of interest to education managers and decision makers as well as implementers, users, consumers, suppliers and vendors of information technology in Australian Education.

For further information go to:

• Website: IDEA 2008
• Email: ideaconference@usq.edu.au
• Contact: (+617) 4631 1827

Throughout June, members of the PILIN project met teams working on persistent identifier infrastructure for US (Handle), UK (RIDIR) and European (CLARIN, EPICUR, SURFshare) initiatives. The teams had very fruitful discussions, finding they had much to learn from each other, but also much in common.

The international initiatives were particularly impressed with the PILIN project's guidelines for managing information using persistent identifiers. Rather than just building a persistent identifier system, the PILIN project took a "back to first principles" approach to thinking about managing information using persistent identifiers. The project asked fundamental questions such as "What is an identifier", "What things should be identified", and "How long should something be identified?". By answering these questions the project was able to develop practical guidance to help communities manage information using persistent identifiers.

The PILIN project in turn learnt much from the international initiatives it met: The CLARIN project has novel ideas about maintaining persistence through use of replicated identifier data; the RIDIR project demonstrated ways to find and fix broken identifiers; EPICUR and SURFshare are investigating a "resolver resolver" for de-referencing identifiers that use different technologies; and CNRI are prototyping new Handle services including an appropriate copy service, an integration with the Grid, and an open registry of custom types for Handles.

Despite using different identifier technologies (Handle, URN, Name-to-Thing), the common ground between the international initiatives was surprising. All of the initiatives proposed identifier infrastructures that decentralised responsibility for maintaining identifiers, but centralised identifier resolution and other services. Communications continue between the Link Affiliates Team that managed PILIN and these international initiatives in terms of information and ideas sharing. The PILIN project is widely regarded as being at the forefront of global developments, something which comes to validate the hard work put in by the PILIN team over the past 18 months.

Standards Australia is Australia's peak Standards body. It coordinates standardisation activities, develops internationally aligned Australian Standards® of public benefit and national interest and facilitates the accreditation of other Standards Development Organisations. Through the Australian International Design Awards it promotes excellence in design and innovation.

Link Affiliates actively supports Standards Australia through direct participation in Standards Australia Committee's and in related international standards activities, chairing committees and actively participating in working groups. For more information on Link Affiliates standards activities: (http://www.linkaffiliates.net.au/Memberships)

The Online Learning Environment from the University of Wollongong was the winner of the top Platinum Award and also picked up a number of specialist category awards. The Online Learning Environment gives Graduate School of Medicine students a single environment from which they can access all resources and functionality relevant to their study.

The Schools Online Curriculum Services (SOCS) from the WA Department of Education and Training won the top Gold Award. SOCS is a 'one stop shop' for teachers, students, administrators and the wider community. It is being progressively made available by Western Australia's Department of Education and Training over a seven year period starting in 2005.

The Learning Federation learning objects and support services was voted the best Content System. The Le@rning Federation develops free online curriculum content for all Australian and New Zealand schools and delivers it to educational jurisdictions. The Learning Federation has developed and licensed a pool of over 6000 learning objects ranging from highly interactive content to file media files associated with education metadata.

The LIAs is a prestigious global event and demonstrates that Australia is at the forefront of using standards to develop technology that improves the quality of learning. The LIAs are unique in that they recognize the use of technology in context. Nominations include not only information about the technology but how it is used by an educational or training organization. In addition, the entries are evaluated according to eight criteria of impact, including improving access to learning, improving affordability of learning, and improving the quality of learning.

The full list of winners can be found at http://www.imsglobal.org/pressreleases/IMSPR-LIAWinners2008.pdf

The three Australian entrants were selected from ten nominees at the Regional Finals as part of IDEA 2007, an event sponsored by the Australian Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations, the University of Southern Queensland and IMS GLC. http://www.linkaffiliates.net.au/idea2007/lia.html

The Graduate School of Medicine received a grant from Link Affiliates to attend Learning Impact after they won the Australian round of the Learning Impact Awards. The Learning Impact event brings together key stakeholders in innovation and best practices in 'learning systems, digital learning content, the learning enterprise, and open technologies'.

Wollongong is being represented by Laurie Lockyer. The two Australian Learning Impact runners-up will also be attending - Schools Online Curriculum Services (Deb Newman and Andrew Thompson) and The Learning Federation (Stuart Tait). The 2008 Australian nominees join the international list of LIAs ensuring that an Australian perspective on e-learning is well represented.

Other Australians will also be represented at the event: On 14 May, Kerry Blinco, the Link Affiliates e-framework and Standards Manager is presenting a paper on "An Australian Digital Education Revolution" and Prof. James Dalziel from MELCOE is presenting on "Using LAMS Branching for Personalised Learning".

The meetings in the first week will focus on the strategic issues and planning towards the e-Framework's vision of enabling effective use of information and communication technologies to support education, research and administration. The meetings in London will focus on the information and knowledge management framework that supports the vision. Representatives from the Australian Department of Employment, Education and Workplace Relations, the United Kingdom's Joint Information Systems Committee, New Zealand's Ministry of Education and the Netherlands SURFfoundation will meet to discuss this.