Hieraki – Hierarchical Wiki Software

http://www.hieraki.org/

Just one of those things that I stumbled across through a dedicated Google search feed; Hieraki is an open source, Ruby-based (hence the reason you’ve probably never heard of it; many who try Ruby seem to rave about it but it never seems to gain traction versus its competitors) wiki-like system that structures pages by ‘Chapters’ and sub-sections to assist with collaborative book authoring. Someone has even tried building a ‘learning object repository’ named Noc on top of it. Not an endorsement, just a pointer to an interesting experiment. – SWL

BCcampus selects The Learning Edge to power repository

http://www.bccampus.ca/Page514.aspx

Early this year we went (back) out to RFP for software to power a ‘learning object repository’ for BCcampus. OpenSchool BC and the Alberta Online Consortium, both from the K-12 world, were also partners in the RFP.

In May we reached a decision to go with The Learning Edge, an LCMS product from Australia. There were many good proposals, but overall we were very impressed with the maturity of the solution (which given the history became increasingly important), its support of standards, and its interoperation with existing repositories and CMS (all of WebCT, Blackboard and Moodle are supported out of the box). It also comes with a Java-based WYSIWYG editor, which has the potential to greatly assist with re-contextualizing and re-using content from the repository, though in the multi-institutional settings all three organizations inhabit we are cautious about how much uptake of that tool we will see.

Really, though, the fun has just begun; we are now proceeding to get our instance up and running and configured. The challenge isn’t the software – that’s also one of its real strengths, a very powerful administrative interface – the challenge is the process pieces, workflows, schemas, etc. We aren’t starting from scratch, much of the work we did last year will still apply, but I’m also not expecting to get it perfect on the first try. Part of the trick will be devising a reasonable change management process that allows us to innovate some of the interface and logic while still fostering user adoption and familiarity. Wish me luck! We are aiming to open the doors in October, though my expectation is for a ‘soft launch’ that slowly grows. – SWL

Open Source Means Just That

Those who know me personally know that the past year was a bit of an uphill struggle. In addition to battling my Crohn’s disease last year, I was the lead on a project to implement a learning object repository here in B.C. based on some code another university had created. The partnership did not work out as hoped, and after 7 months we finally decided to cancel our involvement in the project.

We’ve moved on and should be announcing our choice of software to implement that same LOR in the not too distant future. But when things go the way they’ve gone, the least one can do is try and learn from the mistakes, and hopefully share that learning.

Hence this post. The lesson is exactly what’s stated in the title, and I certainly feel all the more boneheaded for admitting I had to learn it the hard way. And the lesson is this – at the moment you declare a project to be “open source” the source code better be available for download somewhere. Period. None of this “well, we’re just going to get it to this certain point before we release it, but really, it’s open source.” Sorry, no. I understand the desire to get things ‘just right’ before others see it, and the desire to take code that’s been written for a specific instance (and thus probably has all sorts of shortcuts and not-so-great practices in it) and make it more ‘generalizable’ before the public gets their hands on it. But these urges need to be resisted. If you’re serious about something being ‘open source’ then realize that part of the openness means a development practice that’s literally ‘out in the open,’ open for scrutiny (and also for people to pick up on their own, without having to enter into political or economic relationships with you ahead of time.) It’s clear that releasing something that works, or that at least is comprehensible, provides a big leg up for open source projects that are just starting up, so by all means get your code to that point before you declare it’s an open source project. Just don’t declare it to be ‘open source’ and then keep developing it in secret.

I expect there’s a lot of folks who will read this and go “well duh!” Like I said, it feels boneheaded to have to admit to learning this the hard way. I fell for the argument that one could talk about releasing something as open source “when it was ready” while all the while toiling away in private. And yet, the number of projects I continue to come across, that keep doing exactly this (“Yes ours is an open source project” “oh, so where can I download the code from” “oh, it’s not ready for release yet”) leads me to believe I’m not the only one who’s ever been sold this bill of goods. It’s important to do this, not just because literally it’s the very definition of “open source,” but because it recognizes that fundamentally, “open source” is as much about a form of software development practice and social organization as it is about a form of software license (which in the end is simply the precondition for the phenomenon). And while you may feel awkward about making your mistakes out in the open, it’s easier to work that way if you’re already working that way, instead of having to invent a process and openness that wasn’t there from the start. – SWL

Edutech Mauritius

http://www.edutech.mu/

I remember having to go look up Mauritius on a map a few years back when I first heard about the learning object repository project that had started there (a PHP-based repository that looks to be steadily growing).

Apparently not content to rest on their laurels for being the smallest (and one of the first) country to have a learning object repository, someone there has decided to innovate further and create Edutech Mauritius, a Drupal-based site offering some free online courses, as well as serving as the hub of a community for “promoting and applying information and communication technologies (ICT) to enhance the educational experience.” I don’t know at all that these two initiaitves have any conntection, but to see both of them come out of this rather small island nation is amazing and impressive. It’s things like this, plus announcements like these, that make me want to focus on getting back to hacking solutions on my own again. – SWL

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

CWSpace Poster at SPARC Institutional Repository Workshop

http://cwspace.mit.edu/docs/ProjectMgt/Reports/SPARC-IR-Workshop/sparc-poster.html

Via a post on the Dspace-LOR mailing list by William Reilly of MIT comes mention of this poster concerning various content packaging methods for LOs. The poster was produced for use at the SPARC Institutional Repository Workshop by the CWSpace project, a project investigating the use of Dspace to archive MIT’s Open CourseWare materials. The poster is an awkward size, but well worth a look as it gives a good overview of the issues and some of the alternate approaches to content packaging that are currently converging.

‘I hear that train a coming….’ – SWL

D-Lib Article – A Web Service Interface for Creating Concept Browsing Interfaces

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november04/sumner/11sumner.html

Some of you may have run across the VUE concept mapping application before. One of its promises is that it will allow you to create concept map interfaces to Fedora-based repositories.

This recent D-Lib article describes a similar innovation, but in this case it is the introduction of a web service-based interface called “Concept Space Interchange Protocol” to support the deployment of concept browsing interfaces to digital libraries. As the paper concludes “The merit of [the] approach lies in its innovative use of web services technology to provide an educationally relevant visualization service across distributed library sites, as opposed to creating a visualization interface for a single library.”

What’s that sound you hear? Listen carefully, it’s the sound of the train leaving the station, and while the library community all quietly climbed aboard, the ed tech community was still debating the need for a train. – SWL