A presentation on European Schoolnet's Learning Resource Exchange service for schools at IMS Learning Impact 2009
- 1. Building aLearning Resource Exchange (LRE)for SchoolsJim
Ayre European Schoolnet (EUN)
2. What is European Schoolnet (EUN)? Dedicated to Supporting
schools inbringing about the best useof technology in learning
Promote the European dimension in schoolsand education Improving
and raisingthe quality of educationin EuropeNetwork of 31
Ministries of Education in Europe founded in 1997 3. Range of
projects and services EUNActivities ICT policies and practice Peer
Learning ICT Cluster eTwinning School Innovation Internet Safety
School Validation Xplora Xperimania School networking and services
Spring Day Development Youth Prize eLearning Awards Insight Portal
PIC LIFE LRE ASPECT Interoperability and content exchange MELT
CALIBRATE CELEBRATE 4. CELEBRATE demonstration project 2002- 2004
CALIBRATE connecting repositories 2005-2007 MELT content enrichment
2006-2009 ASPECT content standards 2008-2011 Building a Learning
Resource Exchange LRE 2008 emapps iClass 5. Large scale
projects
- CELEBRATE - 5M funding from IST Programme
- CALIBRATE - 3.3M funding from IST Programme
- MELT - 3M funding eContent plusProgramme
- ASPECT - 3.7M funding eContent plusProgramme
6. Initial Questions 2001?
- Do teachers like LOs and do LOs support innovative forms of
teaching and learning?
- Is investment by public/private sectors worthwhile?
- Do emerging standards (for interoperability - IMS content
packaging, SCORM)actuallymake it easier to exchange and re-use
content within LMSs, LCMSs, VLEs etc.)?
- Can teachers and pupils make their own standards compliant,
interoperable LOs?
7. Key Technical Issue:federated search
- Can CELEBRATEdemonstratea working technical solution (a
Brokerage System) that allows Ministries, publishers, other content
providers and individual schools to access and exchange Learning
Objects across national borders?
8. CELEBRATE achievements
- 1400 Learning Objects, 2400 Learning Assets and 25 authoring
templates
- Demonstrated a Brokerage System architecture that supports
federated searching
- Tested content in 319 schools in six countries
- Independent evaluation led by OU
(UK)http://celebrate.eun.org
9. CELEBRATE demo portal 10. Conclusion and outlook 2004
- CELEBRATEdemonstratedthe LRE concept
-
- but connecting to a federation of repositories required effort
and commitment
- A licensing mechanism needed for open content
-
- Creative Commons licensing scheme developing momentum
- Business models of commercial content providers?
11. CELEBRATE project
- MoE lukewarm about some SCORM features and other standards
- Does SCORM support a vision for eLearning that can be taken to
scale in European schools?
12. SCORM in CELEBRATE?
- Too focused on constant assessment?
- Too part of a VLE/LMS/learning platform solution being driven
by commercial vendors?
- Too aligned with H.E. rather than schools?
- Personalised learning - not flexible enough for group and
collaborative learning?
13. Verdict of 13 MoEs on CELEBRATE
- The Demo Portal ought to become a European repository of
Learning Objects and other material. It should be open also to
other EUN countries so that they can put there their material and
translate existing material to their own language.
14. Content that travels well 15. Content that travels well? 16.
Content that travels well?? 17. Content that travels well??? 18.
CALIBRATE Oct 05 - Mar 08
- Made it easier to connect repositories to an open source BS
architecturehttp://limbs.sourceforge.net
- CELEBRATE - 2 to 3 months to connect
- CALIBRATE - 2 to 3 days to connect
- Helped to develop the LRE asa servicefor MoEs and other content
partners
19. CALIBRATE Portal for Schools 20. LeMillopen source
authoring/collaboration tools 21. Creative Commons?
- Many MoE and teachers almost automatically select a Non
Commercial option
- Problems with remixing content (LeMill)
- CC currently reviewing and obtaining feedback on NC
license
22. MELT Oct 06 - Mar 09
- Federating repositories little use if we cannot solve problem
of volume metadata creation
- MELT - a new metadata ecology involving
-
-
- automatic metadata generation
-
-
- folksonomies and social tagging
- Provide a scalable, cost-effective solution to meet the
challenge of volume metadata creation
23. Lessons from CELEBRATE
- Educational budgets struggle to cope with the demand for
more/better metadata created by trained indexers
- It is more useful to think of LOs having affordances or lending
themselves to a particularly pedagogical method or learning
style
- We need metadata that more accurately reflectshow LOs are
actually usedin different learning contexts
- Social tagging by teachers
24. MELT findings on social tagging
- Social tagging adds value for experienced indexers
- Tags not yet used by teachers for searching for learning
resources
- Not a final conclusion - there is a need to reassess the
effectiveness of tags for searching as improvements are made to how
one can combine and display tags on the portal
25. LRE public portal http://lreforschools.eun.org
- LRE public portal officially launched Dec 2008
- A re-branded version of the MELT portal
- Over 130,000 resources/assets in May 2009 from 25
providers
- Being promoted initially to 60,000 eTwinning schools
26. What is the LRE Vision?
- LRE is a serviceforMoE drivenbyMoE and involves private sector
partners
- Aim is to improve use and reuse of educational content in
schools
-
- better technical interoperability between repositories
-
- improve semantic interoperability of content
-
- develop best practice in how to implement content-related
standards
27. What is the LRE Vision?
- It isNOTa centralised portal
- but aframeworkthat supports semantic and technical
interoperability of content repositories
- Adds value to national content strategies
28. 29. Why join the LRE?
- T he most important Europe-wide (and potential global) player
in e-learning content may become the European Schoolnet (EUN)
through their European Learning Resource Exchange which is
currently under development.
-
- Open Educational Practices and Resources: OLCOS Roadmap 2012,
January 2007
30. Learning Resource Exchange
- Federating applications/platforms that provide learning
resources to schools (repositories, learning platforms, authoring
environments)
- Providing seamless access to K-12 resources to applications
that consume these (portals, VLEs)
31. MoE LRE Partners
- Initial LRE partners inc. partners in the CALIBRATE and MELT
projects -16 Ministries of Education in Europe :
-
- Austria, Belgium (Flemish community), Region of Catalonia
(Spain), Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland,
Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden
-
- plus Czech Republic repository April 2009 -17 MoE
-
- plus France and Portugal in ASPECT project - 2009 -19 MoE
- MoE LRE Working Group defining strategy
32. Why work with EUN?
- We want to bridge the gap between community publishers and
professional publishers.
- John Tuttle, Cambridge University Press
33. Content partner benefits
- Reach aa global audience with your content
- LOM-based application profile for schools
- Multilingual thesaurus/vocabularies
- Feedback on your resources - popularity, ratings, comments
- Discover which of your resources travel well
- Enrichment of your metadata - LRE social tagging
- Automatic metadata generation
- Automatic metadata translation
- Expert support on semantic interoperability and standards for
content exchange
34. LRE global alliances
- There is asharedvision with other global players - OER
Commons..GLOBE..
35. Some LRE Associate Partners 36. How to Join?
- Send us an example of your metadata
- One-to-one meetings to discover your requirements
- Send staff to a LRE technical workshop
37. Flexible technical solutions
- Connect a repository, portal or VLE to the federation
- Let the LRE harvest your metadata using OAI-PMH
- mass upload of your metadata - just complete an Excel
spreadsheet
38. New solutions
- LRE search from within a national portal already implemented
(Scoilnet)
LRE widget that can be integrated in other applications -
eTwinning 39. http://lre.eun.org 40. ASPECT Sept 08 - Feb 2011
- eContent plusBest Practice Network
- 9 MoE - Denmark, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy,
Lithuania, Portugal, Slovenia
- Commercial partners - Cambridge University Press, Icodeon,
Siveco, Young Digital Planet, Vocabulary Management Group
- Experts from all international standardisation bodies and
consortia active in eLearning:CEN/ISSS, IMS, IEEE, ISO, ADL...
41. ASPECT Rationale
- The standards organisations are inherently top-down and
reactive. There is no other way for them to be. Inevitably they
have to work on historic data. They have to tend to the restrictive
rather than the enabling - even though some will argue, correctly,
there are some fine borders. I think they are doomed to fail or if
they dont fail we are doomed.
- Martin Owen, September 2007, Naace newsletter
42. ASPECT Aims
- Assess standards and specifications through their
implementation on a critical mass of educational content -plugfests
and workshops
- Develop best practice in terms of implementing those
standards
- Make recommendations on the combination of a number of
standards to ensure more transparent interoperability
43. Scope & Structure
- Metadata:IEEE LOM, Dublin Core
- Vocabulary:XVD, VDEX, ZTHES, SKOS
- Protocol:SQI, SPI, SRU/SRW, OAI-PMH
- Query Language:CQL, PLQL, LRE-QL
- Registry:CORDRA, ADL Registry
Content discovery 44. Scope & Structure
- Format:IMS Content Packaging, SCORM, IMS Common Cartridge, IMS
QTI
- Identifier:Handle System, DOI
- Content access control:Creative Commons, IMS Common Cartridge,
LRE access controls
Content discovery Content use 45. Best Practices Content use
Content discovery Best practices 46. LRE Service Centre
- Registry for Learning Object Repositories
- Vocabulary bank for education
- Application profile registry
- Automatic translation service for metadata
- Transformer service (turn metadata and vocabularies into
another format)
- Information on known interoperability issues
- Learning Technology Standards Observatory
47. http://aspect-project.org 48. Further Information
- http://info.melt-project.eu
- http://aspect-project.org
- http://lreforschools.eun.org
49. Discussion
- Perceived benefits of specific content standards may depend
upon
-
- Unspoken assumptions by policy makers and teachers about what
constitutes good learning with ICTin Europe
-
- Wider social perceptions of how publicly funded content should
be used for commercial gain