Another successful IDEA 2008 announces the winners of the IMS GLC Australian Regional Learning Impact Awards

The standards and interoperability series of events, IDEA 2008, was proud to hold the IMS GLC Australian Regional Learning Impact Awards (LIAs) competition. The two day event, facilitated by the Link Affiliates team, is jointly sponsored by the Australian government - Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) and the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). Held in Melbourne on 12 & 13 November, 11 quality finalists took part from which the following LIA awards winners were announced:

• Winner - LAMS and the LAMS Community from Macquarie University and the LAMS Foundation
• 1st Runner Up - Scootle from the Le@rning Federation
• 2nd Runner Up - QTImPlayer with support from TAFE Tasmania and TAFE NSW Armidale

The LIA awards are unique in that they recognize the use of technology in context. Nominations include information about the technology along with how it is used by an educational or training organization. Entries are evaluated according to eight criteria of impact, including improving access to learning, improving affordability of learning, and improving the quality of learning.

LAMS (Learning Activity Management System) and the LAMS Community with Macquarie University and the LAMs foundation took the top prize and first place in the competition. LAMS provides educators with a visual drag-and-drop environment for authoring and sharing Learning Designs, along with a Learning environment for deployment with students, and a teacher monitoring environment for tracking student progress.

Second place in the competition was awarded to Scootle from The Le@rning Federation. Scootle is a secure online teaching and learning environment for teachers, trainee teachers and students to help them find and use national digital resources.

QTImPlayer with support from TAFE Tasmania & TAFE NSW Armidale Inst was the third place winner. QTImPlayer is a mobile application enabling the user to access, read, play, complete, record and report outcomes for IMS Question and Test Interoperability (QTI) 2.0 compliant and validated assessment tools.

All three winners will be invited to compete at an international level at the Learning Impact Awards to be held in Barcelona Spain the 11 - 14 May 2009. Any organization may submit a nomination for the international competition at http://www.imsglobal.org/learningimpact2009/liformchoice.cfm until 31 December 2008. Information and registration for the Learning Impact Conference is available at: http://www.imsglobal.org/learningimpact2009/index.html

About IMS Global Learning Consortium (IMS GLC)

IMS Global Learning is a global, nonprofit, member organization that strives to enable the growth and impact of learning technology in the education and corporate learning sectors worldwide. IMS GLC members provide leadership in shaping and growing the learning industry through community development of interoperability and adoption practice standards and recognition of the return on investment from learning and educational technology. For more information, including the world's most comprehensive set of learning technology interoperability standards, information on the annual Learning Impact conference and awards program, and free community resources for learning technology leaders, visit www.imsglobal.org.

	Winner: LAMS and the LAMS Community - Macquarie University & LAMS Foundation James Dalziel (MELCOE) and Professor Alan Smith (University of Southern Queensland - from the judging panel)
	1st runner-up: What is Scootle? - The Le@rning Federation Nick Weideman (Curriculum Corporation) and Preety Agarwal (The Le@rning Federation)
	2nd runner-up: QTImPlayer - TAFE Tasmania Stephen Brain and Peter Higgs (TAFE Tasmania)

Posted in November 2008