European Schoolnet

Metadata for Learning

Tel Aviv 2003-01-26

Frans Van Assche

Strategy Manager European Schoolnet

European Schoolnet

European Schoolnet (EUN)

• Organisation of 25 ministries of education• EUN office: 30 people working in Brussels• Lead, share and serve in the field

– Educational policymaking• Ministries, European Community, Diff Bodies

– Schooling• Teachers, Students, Parents, School managers, Inspectors,

Content providers, IT industry

– Educational Network Operation• National network operators, International networks

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What Business Are We in

Policy Making Schooling Edu Network Operation

Research

Practice

Networking

Awareness

Support offline/online

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Questions and Concerns

• Does reuse really work?• Metadata are something of the past. Now we use

Google and no-one is metadata tagging anymore.• Why using standards, they are too restrictive.

Which standards anyway? The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from

• You may have these questions yourself or you may encounter people with these questions

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But First

• Learning technology has redefined terms– Metadata– Learning Object– Reuse

• Illustrative Examples

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Metadata• Late sixties: Origin in database and software

development. Originally: Data about Data; e.g. datatype, description, owner, etc

• 1978: Meta-database driving applications• 1995: Platform for Internet Content Selection

(PICS)• 1995: Dublin (Ohio) Core Metadata Initiative• 1998: European Treasury Browser Project• 1999: DC extensions for education• 2002: Learning Object Metadata. Now in LT:

Data about an object• http://orc.dev.oclc.org:5103/metamarda-l/msg00097.html

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Curent metadata schemes for Learning Resources

• Application Profiles for DC– ELR MES (ETB project)– DC extensions for education

• LOM– Standard since June 2002– Various Application Profiles Under

construction

• Ottawa agreement to converge

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Learning Object

• Origin: The Object Oriented Approach in Software Engineering: encapsulated behaviour, information hiding, inheritance, classification, avoiding the ripple effect

• Original question: Can we apply OO techniques to the development of multimedia resources to facilitate reuse in education?

• The LOM standard defines a Learning Object as any entity, digital or non-digital, that may be used for learning, education or training.

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Reuse

• Software Engineering– A software engineer develops a piece of software A;

(another) software engineer adapts and integrates it as A’ in his own program. Many users use A and A’

– Find, Evaluate, Obtain, Adapt, Integrate

• Learning technology– A teacher produces a LO A and uses it in his classroom– The teacher reuses it in another classroom– Another teacher reuses it also in his classroom with or

without modifications

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Illustrative Examples

• Current practice: European Learning Resource Brokerage system

• Current development with Learning Objects: The Celebrate project

• Current development for School Administration: The Schools Interoperability Framework

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ICT in education

PCs in the school

Administration

PC’s in the Classroom

CD-ROM

Networking

Resources CollaborationNetworked

School

Administration

RepositoriesLearning

Resources

Brokerage Systems Learning ObjectsLMS

LCMS

VLE

Polyhierarchy of

Brokerage Systems

Palm,

Tablet PC

Mobile

Intelligent

Learning

Personalised

VLEs

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Current practice

PCs in the school

Administration

PC’s in the Classroom

CD-ROM, MM

Networking

MM Resources CollaborationNetworked

School

Administration

RepositoriesLearning

Resources

Brokerage Systems Learning ObjectsLMS

LCMS

VLE

Polyhierarchy of

Brokerage Systems

Palm,

Tablet PC

Mobile

Intelligent

Learning

Personalised

VLEs

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What does it take to work?

• Resources

• An application profile for a metadata system

• A brokerage system

• Learning Content Management Tools

• Learning Management Tools

• Economic, organisational feasibility

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European Learning ResourceBrokerage System

• Result of the European Treasury Browser (ETB) project

• Dublin Core Application Profile– Extensions to the DC MES– ELR thesaurus of 1200 terms in 9 languages for schools– Controlled Vocabularies– Resource Description Framework (RDF) binding

• 1st generation brokerage system• About 12,000 resource descriptions• Quality descriptors• Collections of trusted resources

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......

......

...

I

DK

D

EUN

......

...

.....

.....

.....

Thesaurus

EUN

NNTP Network

EUN

JRC

UNI-C

LUND

Fun.

Tel.

JRC

S

FETB Light

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Present Network

• INDIRE (Italy)• JRC (Italy)• UNI-C (Denmark)• LUND (Sweden)• DBS (Germany)• EUN

– EUN own repository (KMS)– Central– ETB Native repository

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DC - ETBDC.TitleDC.CreatorDC.SubjectDC.DescriptionDC.PublisherDC.ContributorDC.DateDC.TypeDC.FormatDC.IdentifierDC.SourceDC.LanguageDC.RelationDC.CoverageDC.Rights

Subject Keywords

Subject Thumbnail

Subject Audio sample

Audience – Age

Audience – Level

Format Medium

Format Requirements

Format Extent

Learning Situation

User Comments

Aggregation Level

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Extending the network• Educasource (France)• CNICE (Spain)• Fundación Telefónica (Spain)• Pedagogic Center of the Jewish Agency (Israel)• FWU München • Ministry of Education, Denmark• Nordisk Ministerlands Sekretariat• Ministry of Education Science and Culture, Iceland• Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, Netherlands• Norwegian Board of Education, Norway• Interklasa, Poland• National Agency for Education, Sweden• CTIE/SFIB, Switzerland• Ministry of Education, Finland • Ministry of Education Austria• Local ministries in Austria: Tirol, Vorarlberg • Liechtenstein• Northern Italy (Südtirol)• Southern Germany - Baden Würtenberg

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Feedback• Some have difficulty to use RDF

• Some don’t want to implement a database yet

• Some don’t want to maintain a thesaurus or any other vocabulary

• Some don’t want to use PERL

• Some don’t want to be dealing with NNTP posts and reads

• Some start from scratch but don’t want to install a native repository on top of GIST

• Some prefer not to use XML

• Some want to avoid developing Repository Management

• Some would like to own a collection of ETBMES but prefer to avoid to develop anything

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ETB ScenariosOwn repository?

Ready to use XML?

YES

Ready to use RDF & Perl?

YES

Repository Integration

Toolkit

ETB Light form based

NOYES

Metadata Toolkit + RIT

ETB Light simple XML

based

NOYES

Ready to install perl modules?

NO

NO

Ready to install a Linux machine?

Native

Repository

Virtual Native

Repository

NO YES

Contact: thomas.maier@eun.org

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Collections at the EUN

EUN

ETB postedCollection

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Collection level descriptors

• Title • Subject • Description • Publisher • Collection Type• URL• Audience • Metadata Language• Resource Language• Logotype • Quality Selection• Country

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In Development

PCs in the school

Administration

PC’s in the Classroom

CD-ROM

Networking

Resources CollaborationNetworked

School

Administration

RepositoriesLearning

Resources

Brokerage Systems Learning ObjectsLMS

LCMS

VLE

Polyhierarchy of

Brokerage Systems

Palm,

Tablet PC

Mobile

Intelligent

Learning

Personalised

VLEs