You’ll likely see this a few times today, but the Fedora project have released version 2.0 of what they term their “general purpose repository service.” This should prove interesting – Fedora has been talked about at various times as a possible LOR solution, even though its origins are in the ‘institutional repository’ space. Tip o’ the hat to David Mattison for spotting this. Stay tuned! – SWL
Category: Learning Objects
Infrae ‘Railroad Repository’ for Plone or Zope
http://www.infrae.com/products/railroad
I am really not sure why I haven’t seen more of this, as the longer I look at the LOR problem the more sense it makes to me that ‘conventional’ repositories can be reasonably easily built on the back of existing (large and relatively stable) open source Content Management Systems. This comes as well with a realization that try as one might, it is likely not feasible to omit the content management of learning objects from one’s solution. This repository system, from a software development company based in the Netherlands, runs on top of Plone or Zope and appears to support OAI harvesting of Dublin Core records out of the box.
In truth there are a couple of repositories I know of that have taken the similar approach – Connexions is built on Plone, and Rob Woodbury’s Avire (though not explicitly an LOR) on top of TikiWiki. And then there is Eduplone, but to be honest I have never quite sussed that one out. – SWL
PLANET Digital Repository
http://ants.etse.urv.es/planetdr/
On the surface just another repository project, but of interest to me because it is a current project from outside of Canada that seems to have picked up the Edusource Communications Layer (ECL) developed by Marek Hatala and others as part of the Edusource project.
This is the second piece of information I’ve had in as many weeks that Edusource isn’t maybe as moribund as it’s original website would lead one to believe. I guess some of the action has moved on to this eRIB site and to this eduSource Registry of Services, but still, it seems pretty unclear to me what in fact is still going on. Would love to know, though. – SWL
University of Arizona’s DLearn – DSpace-based LOR
https://www.dlearn.arizona.edu/index.jsp
I have wondered out loud a few times whether anyone was attempting an LOR on top of DSpace. I got some lukewarm responses but nothing very concrete to back up DSpace’s own claims that it could be used as one. Today I stumbled across this – I don’t know for an absolute fact, but this sure looks like a DSpace-powered site, ostensibly serving ‘learning objects’ hedged as ‘digital learning materials.’
Given my current predicament (some of you will know of which I speak) I’m not really feeling like one to throw stones, glass houses and all that, eh. But this performs kind of how one would expect it to – straightforward support of single object binary blob uploads, searching and browsing, collection support, workflow for submission and fine and dandy archiving using MD5 checksums. And maybe in the end this is all there needs to be, though it seems like we’ve seen enough of that style of repository to convince that it has some shortcomings. Certainly, nothing by way of authorization, DRM, handling of XML content or content aggregation which seem to be where things are heading. So clearly not an endorsement, simply an example. – SWL
Celebrate Evaluation Report Available
http://www.eun.org/eun.org2/eun/en/
Celebrate_Relatedprojects/sub_area.cfm?sa=4688
In case you somehow overlooked it, CELEBRATE (Context eLearning with Broadband Technologies) has been a rather massive 30-month demonstration project (June 2002-November 2004) co-ordinated by European Schoolnet and supported by the European Commission’s Information Society Technologies Programme. It’s task was seemingly to examine all things ‘learning object’ to determine the extent to which it is a good strategy to pursue and how it should be pursued within the EC.
Their evaluation report is now available. Be forewarned – at 202 pages it is book-length and while I haven’t read it all, the bits I have read indicate it’s worth more than just a skim. It includes detailed case studies on the lifecycle of a couple of learning objects, detailed recommendations on how to move forward, and survey results from educators on their experiences with learning objects. With all the snow we just got (yes, 4 inches and counting in Victoria!) I guess I know how I’m spending my weekend. – SWL
WCET/Edutools LOR Comparative Research Released
http://edutools.info/lor/final_report.doc and
http://edutools.info/lor/final_reviews.xls
Regular readers will know that one of my two jobs is working with the folks at the Western Cooperative on Educational Telecommunications (WCET) on the Edutools project to compare course management systems. In fact I just returns from their annual conference, this year held in San Antonio, Texas, which will be the basis for a few posts.
A few months back I wrote about a project we did last spring with 4 state systems to compare existing Learning Object Repository software. Well finally we have released these findings to the public (part of the agreement was that the partners had exclusive use for 6 months before we published the results).
The final report (co-authored by fellow bloggers Bruce Landon and Brian Lamb, as well as Russ Poulin from WCET) is now available. Probably of more interest is the actual side-by-side comparison of 6 products. I would be very interested in any feedback people had on the actual comparative framework we employed, that is, the features and their groupings on which we reviewed the software. We did base it on a bunch of different LOR architecture and use case documents folks have shared on the web, and I used it in our own LOR project here in BC as the basis for our initial requirements set, so I think it stands up pretty well, but I am always interested in hearing whether others think it presents a valid framework for comparison. It shoud be noted that these reviews are now 6 months old, and these products have been rapidly evolving, so caveat emptor. – SWL
CETIS ‘Interoperability in Action’ Video
http://www.x4l.org/video/index.shtml
Derek Morrison at Auricle points to this video from CETIS called ‘Interoperability in Action’ which is well worth a watch. It takes you through a step by step scenario of a user adding an object to the Intrallect Intralibrary-driven JORUM repository, and then a second user accessing that object, extending an existing course, and uploading that course to a variety of CMS/VLE.
At the very least, this illustrates one possible scenario and can serve as a starting point for discussion on other possible authoring and re-use scenarios (trust me, with my perfect 20/20 hindsight vision, you do want to start with scenarios).
Is this the last word in learning content authoring and reuse systems and scenarios? Of course not. It’s more like the first word – a start in demonstrating ’round trip’ content authoring and re-use using de jure standards, which is more than a lot of us can say. – SWL
EASE History Campaign Ads
One thing I love about publishing this blog is that (along with all the spam) it brings in scores of unsolicited pointers to really great educational resources.
The latest one, sent in by Aparna Ramchandran, points to an amazingly timely site from Michigan State University that allows students to learn about US history, presidential elections and issues through the prism of their campaign ads. The campaign ad viewer’s interface is incredibly intuitive and the site also provides a learning guide with a number of suggested activities and questions. Highly recommended – only wish more US voters would take the time to study these in the next 7 days, it’s not hard to see the patterns repeating. – SWL
Open Repository – a U.K.-based DSpace implementor
http://www.openrepository.com/
As if additional proof was needed that there is legs to the value-added open source service model, another example in the field of ‘institutional repositories’ (in addition to the Fedora implementors, VTLS) is this U.K.-based company that is making a business of implementing DSpace.
In addition, the existance of not one but 2 commercialized Institutional Repository packages gives weight to the idea that the IR market is likely to become more well-formed, quicker, than the LOR market (whose budget do you think is bigger – the ed tech department’s or the library’s?) – SWL
SciX – Open, self organising repository for scientific information exchange
Via David Mattison came news of this ‘repository’ project from the European Union to enable open publishing of scientific literature. This is definitely more of the ‘institutional’ repository-type projects, but still lots of interesting stuff to learn from – check out the work packages they defined (who would have thunk to include “repository content” as part of the work) as well as a score of interesting papers they term their ‘deliverables.’
(P.S. Please forgive me if I end up posting a few things you’ve seen before over the next while – it’s tough catching up a month’s absence from the blogosphere). – SWL