Tag: standards

IMS releases elearning specification Abstract Framework

http://www.imsglobal.org/af/index.cfm

“The IMS Abstract Framework (IAF) is a device to enable the IMS to describe the context within which it will continue to develop its eLearning technology specifications. This framework is not an attempt to define the IMS architecture, rather it is a mechanism to define the set of services for which IMS may or may not produce a set of interoperability specifications.” It’s hard to describe how huge this is. A lot of work has gone into this. It is not for the faint of heart. Start with the white paper, that alone is worth a few days or reading and digesting, and is invaluable for the appendices alone. – SWL

Download IMS Specifications as Content Packages

http://www.imsglobal.org/specificationdownload.cfm

You can now download the various IMS specification documents packaged as an IMS Content Packages themselves. The advantages, as their feed says, are that “by downloading the specification as IMS packaged content, you can see what a content package looks like and how it is organized. You can also import it as a learning resource into your Content Packaging enabled learning management system or repository.” – SWL

Two Paths to Interoperable Metadata

http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/
archive/2003/godby-dc2003.pdf

It used to seem that the problem we had was not having enough metadata. Now it is becoming clearer that not only do we have a lot of existing metadata, we have a lot of competing metadata standards and schemas – different ways of describing what are either the same or similar objects.

This paper, presented at the recent 2003 Dublin Core conference, proposes one (in fact two) model to translate between this proliferation of schemas in order to present users with a unified search interface to diverse collections tagged with different metadata schema.
Continue reading “Two Paths to Interoperable Metadata”

TechDis – UK centre for accessibility issues in higher ed

A massive set of resources from the UK post-secondary system aimed at “improv[ing the] provision for disabled staff and students in higher and further education through technology.” Some of the valuable resources on offer here include the Accessibility Database (an example itself of good practice in accessible design and coding – view source to get a sense) and a large collection of papers on accessibility issues. My favourite from that collection was the report “Accessible Curricula: Good Practice for all” (http://www.techdis.ac.uk/pdf/curricula.pdf) which highlights a huge range of accessibility issues, for both classroom-based at distance education. – SWL

Software license that promotes the creation of free (not open source) educational content

You’ve probably seen the software before – Hot Potatoes from Half-Baked Software (a local Victoria, B.C. company), but have you ever read the fine print of the licensing?

“Hot Potatoes is free for use by individuals or educational institutions which are non-profit making, on the condition that the material you produce using the program is freely available to anyone via the WWW.” (emphasis mine)

So not free as in ‘freedom,’ but still a pretty decent kind of free. – SWL

Summary of Library/Museum forum on metadata standards

http://www.rlg.org/events/metadata2003/summary.html

Nice, shortish summary of a recent (May 2003) forum held in New York concerning metadata standards from the Museum/Library/heritage collections world. Worth a look for those ed tech folks dealing with learning object metadata issues, if only to become introduced to some evolving metadata standards in a different field from which we might learn something. – SWL

Article on writing an XSLT RSS Client

An older article, but still interesting. I had thought that aggregators would mostly be using XSLT (maybe they do?) but this article seems to imply that this is an exception, not a rule. In any case, given how straightforward RSS is as an XML format (at least 0.92 and the barebones needed for feeds in 1.0 and 2.0), and given that most aggregator users already kind of know what they’d like a feed to look like, it’s a perfect place to try out your hand at XSL transformations. – SWL

OpenSector.org and Open Source Advisory Service

Two new unrelated but seemingly important sites for news on open source developments and higher ed.

The first, OpenSector.org, promises to be a news service for open source developments relevant to the public sector. Brand new and not much there, but they have received some initial funding from the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF) of Chandler fame.

The second, Open Source Advisory Service (via George Siemens on the Open Education site) is also brand new. A U.K. initiative funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee, the site promises to act as a clearinghouse for information on open source software and standards relevant to the higher ed community. – SWL

PORTAL – Presenting natiOnal Resources To Audiences Locally

A number of useful background resources are available as a result of this project in the U.K., funded by the FAIR Programme of the Joint Information Systems Committee to “explore issues around the deployment and use of portals within the higher and further education community.” 

Of note so far are the ‘Stakeholder Requirements for Institutional Portals’ (www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/downloads/stakereq.pdf) and a report detailing the available metadata standards for the description of portal users (www.fair-portal.hull.ac.uk/downloads/Metadata.pdf.) – SWL

Taxonomy of Open Source Licenses

Via a discussion thread at slashdot on the closing of opencontent.org comes a reference to this handy little table that compares the license-type (shareware, freeware, various forms of open source) with the various ‘features’ of these licenses (redistribution, usage limitations, source code availability…). Quite handy for sorting out some of the subtle points of the various types of open source licenses. Could be used in conjunction with the current list of approved open source licenses from the Open Source Initiative. – SWL