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Giunti Labs
Abbazia dell'Annunziata, Via Portobello - Baia del Silenzio, 16039 Sestri Levante (GE), Italy

Phone: +39 0185 42123; Web www.giuntilabs.com

27th November 2008

Giunti Labs presents new LCMS & DR success stories at Online Educa Berlin

Giunti Labs, a leading learning and mobile content management solution provider and bespoke content producer, is represented at no less than four of the presentations that form the Online Educa Berlin (OEB) conference - the largest global e-learning conference for the corporate, education and public service sectors - which takes place from 3rd to 5th December.

Within the OEB conference, Giunti Labs' CEO, Fabrizio Cardinali, explores the theme of ‘building digital content repositories and marketplaces for the Knowledge Society'.

He explained: "Increasing globalisation is putting pressure on Educational Organisations to invest in better educational materials and in more effective ways to distribute and reuse educational materials, such as e-learning courseware, textbooks and ebooks."

Cardinali believes that, in addition to the increased use of mobile and location-based content delivery and the need for personalised learning experiences, there is an emerging trend for informal access to learning via portals and software-as-a-service (SaaS) systems. This will generate new digital marketplaces for education, revolutionising the way we deal with learning resources online.

"It means that the learning content can be customised by the learner rather than the developer or producer," said Cardinali. "Learners download and use the material or even use it 'on the fly' using new devices such as Apple's iPod Touch or iPhone and Amazon's Kindle.

"Today's big challenge facing providers of academic as well as corporate learning materials is how to enrich existing packaging formats, for learning content publishing and distribution, such as SCORM or the new IMS Common Cartdridge formats, not via single, turnkey system but via an open architecture - especially adding web services protocols to content packages making the learning experience richer and more personalised," he commented.

Giunti Labs' Carin Martell joins Pascal Debordes of Cegos, the €194m, France-based e-learning content producer, to outline the results of Cegos' 2007 cross-Europe learning survey. According to Debordes: "We found that the biggest budgets for corporate training occur in France but much of this money is spent on administration rather than on training.

"The UK spends about a third of French budgets on training but provides its workers with broader access to training materials - and appears to be better at evaluating the return on investment (ROI) from these. Forty seven per cent of surveyed companies in the UK are assessing ROI compared with only 26 per cent in France.

"Nonetheless, learners across Europe have the same expectations of e-learning materials - notably that they are user-friendly; have high quality content, design, graphics and interactivity, and contain ‘concrete' examples and exercises," he said.

In response to the survey's findings, the Cegos Group has expanded its customised e-learning offer to include a range of off-the-shelf modules - in the process, joining forces with Giunti Labs. Cegos also relies on the Giunti Labs' learn eXact learning content management system (LCMS) platform to customise modules according to specific customer demands - and, with this unique market offer, Cegos' e-learning department is targeting sales of €25m in 2010.

Sophie Touzé, of France's Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire de Lyon, along with Amiel Kaplan, of Giunti Labs, France, showcase content federation via Giunti Labs' HarvestRoad Hive digital repository and WebTV.

"For many years, the Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire de Lyon has explored the use of new technologies in pedagogy," said Touzé.

"We believe that new technologies offer a way to integrate the four concepts of good pedagogy: interactivity, autonomy, simulation and collaborative work," she added. "Working with Moodle and HarvestRoad Hive has allowed us to make our learning resources available to, among others, three other national French institutes and the University of Montreal.

"Web TV, part of the Hive repository, is very attractive, offering to any teacher or student the possibility to search, find and watch a video created in their - or another - institute. The query, in this case, is only done from one access point - using OKI technology integrated in Hive," she said.

Finally, Paul Landers of Ericsson, the world leader in telecommunications, outlines a case study of ‘mobile learning for Africa'. Ericsson is partnering with The Earth Institute, Millennium Promise and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in The Millennium Villages project, which is designed to bring mobile communication and the internet to some 400,000 people in ten African countries where the project is working.

The first mobile pilot in this project uses Giunti Labs' technology to deliver just-in-time snippets of learning to train the aid and healthcare workers who help the mothers of newly born children in Rwanda.

Giunti Labs is a Silver sponsor of this year's event. Please visit Giunti Labs at Foyer Potsdam, B61. For further details of OEB, visit http://www.online-educa.com/

In addition, Andrea Lorenzon, Giunti Labs' chief solution architect, is speaking on ‘content production and content management for a new generation' at the OEB Security & Defence Forum, on 3rd December.

In his presentation, Lorenzon is discussing the challenges facing defence organisations which have to manage and deliver both learning content and technical publications in an integrated platform. In particular, Lorenzon examines the emerging technologies, tools, standards, processes and best practices required for building a tailored yet flexible learning platform for both content types.

End

About Giunti Labs

Giunti is unique in the international publishing industry.

In 1497, Giunti publishers and typographers in Florence, together with others in Venice, began modern book manufacturing. Over the years Giunti has built a 'historical catalogue' of huge dimensions, through a gradual process of 'fusion' of different publishers, but also through the creation of new brands, including Giunti Labs. Giunti Editore now includes 20 companies in the publishing sector.

Giunti Labs, which has its global headquarters in Italy and offices in London (UK), Frankfurt (Germany), Lund (Sweden) and in Boston (US), provides a wide range of services, in response to any content, learning and knowledge management need, covering:

• Content production

• Research and development

• Technological solutions for content, learning & knowledge management

• Architectural and technological solutions for mobile & wireless

• Training and consulting

Giunti Labs provides the learn eXact® suite, Europe's leading e-learning and mobile learning content management technology. This suite is interoperable with all major vendor-driven and open source LMS and VLE solutions in the market including Plateau, Oracle, SumTotal, Saba, WebCT, Blackboard, Sakai, LRN and Moodle.

Moreover, Giunti Labs does not just adhere to the international standards relating to the LMS/LCMS world, it is one of the organisations that helps to determine and drive these standards: co-writing and developing them. Giunti Labs plays a key role in most of the international institutions for the definition of eLearning specifications (IEEE LTSC, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC36, CEN/ISSS WSLT, AICC, IMS, ADL-SCORM and OKI).

Further information from:

Minna Leikas, Giunti Labs, +39 3489 399127
Bob Little, Bob Little Press & PR, +44 (0)1727 860405