I recently posted this to the Moodle 2.0 forum at
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=119349
TIm, IMS LTI has two parts – Basic LTI and Full LTI. Basic LTI is launch-only and Full LTI does provisioning, launch, and run-time web services. Marc and Jordi are working on Basic LTI for Moodle 2.0.
Basic LTI essentially allows you to author a Basic LTI resource in a Moodle course like any other resource. In a sense, it is a “smart iFrame”. When you select the resource, instead of just putting the URL in the iFrame, Moodle will generate a form with the user and course information and then sign that request using OAuth (www.oauth.net) and a key/secret stored by the instructor inside Moodle and then auto-post the form, sending the user and course data to the external tool.
OAuth is used by Google and Twitter to establish server-to-server identity and end-user identity. IMS LTI only is using the server-to-server part of OAuth. OAuth insures against replay attack, password guessing attack. Since OAuth is designed to pass through a user’s browser, the data can be “viewed” without compromising security.
Basic LTI allows us to build lots of simple external tools for teaching and plug them into Moodle, Sakai, Blackboard, D2L, etc with the same integration (i.e. Basic LTI).
For all the LMS systems it means less need to install Moodle Modules, Sakai Tools or Building Blocks of “unknown quality” just to play with some tool in one class. It allows both the LMS developers and the LMS administrators to keep their systems clean and unmodified – while at the same time allowing teachers and learners far greater flexibility in the tools they can use in their courses.
It is my hope that this ushers in a new era where really cool learning-focused tools can be developed and used regardless of the LMS system in use at a campus.
I am hopeful that once we get Basic LTI support in all of the major LMS systems, then we can work on trading Learning Tools like trading cards. Instead of needing some PHP code installed in your system – you can add a new tool with a URL, Key, and Secret and a couple of clicks.
This is made even more exciting when we can create course cartridges with Basic LTI Launches embedded in them. This makes cartridges simpler, and smaller and yet allows very rich cartridges to be produced and distributed.
The status of LTI is that Basic LTI is about to be sent to the IMS Technical Advisory Board for review, approval, and release. The draft of the spec is only available to IMS members until it is approved and released as a final spec. There is a public discussion forum about IMS specs at:
http://www.imsglobal.org/community/forum/index.cfm?forumid=11
Let me know if you have any questions.

This is great progress moving forward to getting standardized format for publishers to provide cartridges across many LMS systems. Congratulations to Desire2Learn!
Desire2Learn this week announced that its Desire2Learn Learning Environment has been certified by the IMS Global Learning Consortium to comply with the IMS Common Cartridge Standard 1.0.
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/08/12/desire2learn-gets-ims-common-cartridge-1.0-certified.aspx

There is a great discussion about SCORM, IMS Learning Design, and Simple Sequencing going on between Mark Norton, Colin Smythe, Crispin Weston, and others talking about orchestrating dynamic content within a course. I think that dynamic pathing in content is a critical need where interoperability would be really great. [In my humble opinion: the current specs in the area (SCORM, IMS LD, IMS Simple Sequencing, etc) are all flawed and not responsive to the needs of teachers and learners.]
If you are interested in this topic you are welcome to watch or join in:
http://www.imsglobal.org/community/forum/index.cfm?forumid=11.
Here is my most recent post (a reply to Crispin Weston):
Crispin, with my Sakai/LMS architect hat on, I am very attracted to a declarative approach with pre and post conditions. I like this approach because I think that it is easier to implement and easier to get started to add “dynamic aspects” to an LMS that otherwise has no dynamic features at all (i.e. a very resource-oriented style LMS like Sakai).
While I am not an expert in Angel – I have played with it a bit and like it a lot – it seems to take a view that is a hierarchy of learning objects with pre and post conditions – and while I have not used pre/post conditions – the Angel UI appeals to me.
With my faculty member hat on – I like simple declarative pre and post conditions because I have the feeling that I can start out, author my class with no “design” as a hierarchy of learning objects – then after the initial pass through the material in a semester where stuff is slowly built up/revealed to the students over time (which is a nice pedagogy as it attracts attention to the stuff that is relevant now) – and then in the next semester I am teaching the same course – I already have the material – but I don’t want to dump it all on the students in day one – and some of it I want to hide until I clean it up a bit. All of a sudden my greatest need *as a faculty member* is some simple workflow to add to an existing structure. This way, we give faculty the tools to do simple dynamic pathing in their content.
I understand that pre/post is not “Sequencing with a capital S” – but my feeling is that “complex sequencing” (i.e. my course is a flow chart with 2000 boxes) is something that instructional designers love and faculty generally find uninteresting. I as a faculty member do not see my course and my teaching as “procedural”. I do not want to add a bunch of “GOTO” statements to my course. I see my course as more of a flow of data with fliters turning on and off bits and pieces. In short, my course is more like SQL than FORTRAN – and whenever I see complex sequencing – it makes me think of FORTRAN and computed GOTOs.
With my IMS hat on (third hat now) – I think that a simple spec that captures a language and namespace for pre and post conditions and associates them with pieces of the organization is a real winner. If QTIv1.2 has a good starting point – then that sounds cool to me – I would want to take a fresh look at it to make sure that it is truly *simple* and implementable. I would also look at Angel’s feature set to see if we can take some inspiration from Angel’s triggers.
Overall, I think that we could define and find some low-hanging fruit and come up with something pretty quickly that could find its way into shipping products pretty quickly. My current goal/measure/mantra is “what will make it into shipping products and into the hands of teachers and learners as quickly as possible”.
http://www.imsglobal.org/community/forum/index.cfm?forumid=11.

This presentation will examine the effects of emerging trends in Cloud Computing on the future of higher education. Cloud Computing is already transforming how we teach and learn, and will further redefine the relationships among Information Technology and other campus groups. We will explore how its initiatives can be embraced and leveraged to better serve those constituencies. Innovations and research in Cloud Computing are driven primarily by the commercial sector; higher education is therefore at risk of waiting too long to understand and fully exploit its benefits. We will take a long-term strategic overview of how higher education can partner with Cloud Computing to take a more active role in harnessing and shaping its future.
Note: This is a very rough abstract for a keynote I will be giving in October. Like all my keynote speeches, it will be a romp through my wacky vision of the future with the goal to get people think a little differently after the talk. I would love for folks to comment on this Abstract – since I can still revise it.