Frances Bell

Good questions Aaron.
I'll try to answer some of them.
Links for IMS, SCORM
http://www.imsglobal.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCORM
but I recommend CETIS encyclopedia for straightforward definitions.
I think your question about the need to get vendor support is important.  Perhaps we should raise this with our publisher reps, and at conferences where publishers have stands.

Don't know if any use Moodle but here is a list
and TANDEM comes recommended.

Thanks Don.  I wouldn't describe myself as a developer (though I once was)  but we do hope to commission some development that will contribute to mainstream Moodle development if this pre-proposal is accepted, THEN the proposal is accepted (big IFs).

Anyway here are our project proposal aims:

• To explore the social and pedagogical implications of teachers exchange of collaboration models via media rich online dialogue, collaboration templates, and IMS/LD specifications within an existing CoP -the HELP Network

• To create, implement, and test in CABWEB (built using Moodle OSS, see http://moodle.org ) collaboration templates for Collaborative Building of Knowledge Base, Digital Storytelling, Extended Collaboration with shared goals of language learning, and document  each model in IMS/LD as a UoL.

• To implement and test integration of audio and video media tools into the collaboration model for language learning within CABWEB

• To investigate the reuse of a collaboration model for team work, that includes support for participation, mutual understanding, and joint tasks; by pre-specifying it in an IMS/LD editor/player, integrated with CABWEB and in a second learning environment, using runnable UoLS.

I think that these are pragmatic and if we get to do the project, will contribute to doing and critiquing interoperability using IMS/LD.

I am attending UNFOLD workshop in Berlin on Mon/Tues so hope to get a much broader view of what is happening.

Thanks Don.  I do understand about the portability of source code and hope to see more examples of what you describe in future.
At CABWEB we have used our own "home grown" portability by creating collaboration space (courses in Moodle terminology) templates that tutors can edit, and we have now submitted a Socrates-Minerva project proposal to help us introduce IMS/LD into the equation. 
However, I hope that what you call portability (maybe interoperability) is less than five years distant

Thanks Don, I understand what you have said but wonder about integration below the level of a CMS.
I am someone who drives Moodle without opening the bonnet (well only to top up the windscreen washers ), and I would really appreciate an answer from those who know.  I can see examples of how LAMS, Hot Potatoes, etc. are integrated into a Moodle course but I am not yet clear how easy it is to integrate parts of Moodle (above the source code level) into other configurations.  I love the Glossary tool (activity) - will it be available by, say, web services in future?