ATutor News Update
January 15, 2010

*In this Issue*
-Understanding Web Accessibility Online Course January 25
-Common Cartridge Compliance now Official
-Upcoming Conferences
-Google Summer of Code (coming soon)
-W4A Google Student Awards


*Understanding Web Accessibility Online Course*
The next session of the Understanding Web Accessibility certificate course will start January 25th 2010. The Adaptive Technology Resource Centre (ATRC), a world leader in Web accessibility, is hosting the course. The course is being moderated by Greg Gay, the ATutor project lead and long time Web accessibility guru, and by Alan Cantor of Cantor Access Inc., a leading expert in many things accessible.

The course is primarily intended to help Web developers broaden their expertise with knowledge of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0), and to help them add accessibility practices to their existing Web development skills. With the introduction of accessibility laws around the world, understanding Web accessibility is becoming a necessary part of every Web developers' skill set.

The course is open to everyone, including managers and Web content authors, to help them develop an understanding of what needs to be done to ensure their Web content is accessible to everyone. For more details, a preview, and to register, visit the course Web site at the following link.

Understanding Web Accessibility
http://www.atutor.ca/services/courses.php

*Common Cartridge Compliance now Official*
In ATutor 1.6.4 IMS Common Cartridge (CC) support was added.  Now it's official. ATutor is the first Open Source Learning Management System (LMS) to comply with the standard, and only the second Web application to achieve compliance. 

What makes this release important?  There is now a complete open source CC 1.0 Lite implementation to act as a reference model for other developers thinking about adding CC support to their content management or learning management systems, and it means that content authors can now use ATutor for packaging their instructional content as common cartridges, which can be imported into a number of other systems that are in the process of implementing common cartridge import/player tools. Even if you are not using ATutor as your primary LMS, you can use it to author learning content, then import that content into your LMS. See the IMS Product Directory for the ATutor official CC 1.0 Lite compliance mark.

IMS Product Directory
http://www.imsglobal.org/productdirectory/productdirectory1.cfm?auto=1326

*ATutor at Upcoming Conferences*
Join the ATutor team at several upcoming conference in 2010.

W4A 2010:  April  26 and 27 along side the WWW 2010 conference in Raleigh North Carolina
http://www.w4a.info/2010/index.shtml
http://www2010.org/www/

IMS Learning Impact Conference 2010:  May 17 to 20 in Long Beach California
http://www.imsglobal.org/learningimpact2010/awards.html

AACE ED-MEDIA 2010: June 28 to July 2 in Toronto Ontario
http://www.aace.org/conf/edMedia/

*Google Summer of Code*
The Google Summer of Code is expected to be announced in the coming weeks. ATutor will be hosting a number of students who would like to work in areas or Web accessibility,  content interoperability, and social networking. Google will contribute $5000 U.S. to employ students over the summer. Current ideas on the drawing board for GSoC projects include: a Google Open Social gadget for the AChecker Web content accessibility checker, new mobile themes for ATutor and for AChecker,  a mobile app for ATutor Social, a WAI-ARIA  Web-based multi-file uploader, an ATutor module to integrate the Capscribe video caption editor into the ATutor content authoring tools, and more. Students who have their own ideas for GSoC projects are welcome to submit them through the ATutor Web site, or contact the ATutor team to choose from projects already suggested, but not yet spoken for.

Contact ATutor with your GSoC Ideas
http://www.atutor.ca/contact.php
http://wiki.atutor.ca/display/atutorwiki/Google+Summer+of+Code+2010


*W4A Google Student Awards*
Postgraduate students doing Web accessibility research who would otherwise not be able to attend the W4A conference  (see above) may apply for the W4A Google Award, and have $1200 U.S. contributed toward attending the conference. See the W4A Web site for more information.

http://www.w4a.info/2010/news/2010/01/announcing-w4a-google-student-awards.shtml