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

• 22 partners

CALIBRATE - 3.3M funding from IST Programme

• 17 partners

MELT - 3M funding eContent plusProgramme

• 18 partners

ASPECT - 3.7M funding eContent plusProgramme

• 22 partners

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

• Content packagingyes!

• Simple sequencing?

• Student tracking?

• QTI?

Does SCORM support a vision for eLearning that can be taken to scale in European schools?

12. SCORM in CELEBRATE?

Too US centric?

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

• • expert indexers

• • 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

An infrastructure for:

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

4.6 million budget

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

Compliance testing

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://celebrate.eun.org

http://calibrate.eun.org

http://info.melt-project.eu

http://aspect-project.org

http://lre.eun.org

http://lreforschools.eun.org

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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