ANGEL Learning Pledges Open Source Contribution to IMS Global Learning Consortium Community

For Immediate Release - June 21, 2006

Common cartridge digital content standard for education gains momentum with company's contribution.

Indianapolis, Ind. – June 21, 2006 – ANGEL® Learning, recognized innovator of enterprise e-learning software and services, today announced it is contributing substantial intellectual property to the IMS Global Learning Consortium. The contribution of ANGEL Learning source code to the IMS/GLC common cartridge digital content standards development serves the greater good of the education community and represents the first reference implementation offering by an LMS provider.

“This contribution from ANGEL Learning enables implementation of an important portion of the IMS common cartridge specification and will be a tremendous benefit to publishers or other implementers,” said Rob Abel, CEO, IMS/GLC. “The  specification, and the ANGEL donated software will now enable publishers to design access control for their content more easily and consistently regardless of the eventual course management player it will reside in.” 

IMS/GLC is a global consortium of educational product and service providers, government organizations, and higher education institutions. The IMS/GLC common cartridge effort seeks to enable greater access to high quality digital learning materials by producing a standard form of the most commonly transacted educational content, a course level collection of objects, while also protecting the content developer’s intellectual property, as required.  

The source code will be made available through the IMS/GLC’s Developers Network. “ANGEL's contribution of source code and intellectual property represents the type of contribution from the IMS/GLC community that our member organizations can expect to benefit from,” said David Ernst, chair of the IMS/GLC Board of Directors and the CIO and assistant vice chancellor of the Cal State University System. “All the major publishers and course management providers are working well together to create a greater sense of openness, and we thank ANGEL Learning for their acceleration of this dialog.”

ANGEL Learning’s commitment to openness drives development of the ANGEL Learning Management Suite as an open system and the company’s active participation in the standards community. As a result of the ANGEL Learning contribution to IMS/GLC, the standards community can move forward more quickly with the common cartridge effort, education publisher content will be protected, and digital learning materials standardized to enable interoperability and content reuse will be more quickly available to the educational community.

“Our contribution today marks the depth of our commitment to open standards, as well as
our philosophy toward content providers,” said Ray Henderson, vice president and chief products officer, ANGEL Learning. “We hope to help create an environment where content publishers invest more in their online products.  Producing higher quality protection and simplifying its implementation are important steps in the right direction.”

About ANGEL Learning
ANGEL Learning, Inc. develops and markets enterprise e-learning software.  Our flagship products are the ANGEL Learning Management Suite and the ANGEL ePortfolio system.  Our products have been honed by use – with millions of students and instructors served from K to corporate.  We enjoy a reputation for creating products with exceptional ease of use, excellent vision into learner progress, and for keeping our commitments.  Having emerged from the academy ourselves, our core values reflect those of our customers well.  ANGEL world headquarters is in Indianapolis, Indiana.  To learn more about simply powerful ANGEL LMS, visit us at www.angellearning.com

About IMS Global Learning Consortium
IMS/GLC is the leading advocacy group encouraging the growth and impact of learning technology worldwide. IMS/GLC is a global, nonprofit, member organization that provides leadership in shaping and growing the learning industry through community development of standards, promotion of innovation, and research into best practices.  For more information visit www.imsglobal.org

Media Contact
Nancy Schmutzler
(317) 333-7332
nancys@angellearning.com