Collaborative Innovation: Insights from the Learning Impact Conference
We recently had the opportunity to attend the annual Learning Impact Conference hosted by 1EdTech. I enjoy this conference as it is a gathering of brilliant minds who are interested in improving education through shared standards. It sounds a bit boring, but it is the shared experience of working to agree on technical standards that brings this group together.
In the working groups and at the conference, engineers and product managers from competing companies come together to build something mutually beneficial. In these conversations, you will find leaders from Atomic Jolt, Desire2Learn, Blackboard, Instructure, TurnItIn, Cengage, Google, Penn State, and so many other organizations. That’s a lot of big names vying for market share. It’s also a lot of great people who not only get along but really enjoy engaging with one another both professionally and personally.
Atomic Jolt joined 1Edtech several years ago to help solve the course copy problem that plagues our industry. With two upcoming standards — the Platform Notification Service and the Link Content Service — we will finally have a solution. That solution is directly attributable to the amazing group of individuals that meet each week in the LTI working group. Joel, Atomic Jolt CEO, had the opportunity to present with Mike Johnston from Desire2Learn, and Andy Fisher from Penn State had the opportunity to both present the problem and how these new standards will help to solve it.
Standards are a pretty boring topic for most - a necessary treaty between large organizations so that we can ensure our systems can talk to each other. Learning Impact was a chance to connect, to learn, to engage with interesting people, and to hike.