Educational Portals: trends and issues
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The document discusses educational portals and learning object repositories. It describes four dimensions of educational portals: community, content, management, and news. It provides examples of portals for each dimension. It then discusses learning objects and learning object repositories, which allow standardized digital learning resources to be shared. The document outlines considerations for developing a learning object repository and describes the development of Estonia's learning object repository called Koolielu 2.0.
Educational Portals: trends and issues
- 1. ì Educational Portals: trends and issues Mart Laanpere, head of Centre for Educa3onal Technology, Tallinn University
- 2. Four dimensions of educational portals ì Community: teacher networking, discussions, ad-‐hoc groups ì Content: learning resources, lesson plans ì Management: official documents, curriculum, guidelines, valida3on, accountability ì News: aggrega3ng school-‐related news, events, research results, job offers, course offerings for teachers
- 3. Examples ì Community-‐oriented: etwinning.eun.org ì Content-‐oriented: KlasCement.net ì Management-‐oriented: CurriculumOnline.gov.uk ì News-‐oriented: elearningeuropa.info
- 4. Learning Objects ì The concept of “educa3onal soJware” did not work (lockdown) ì Learning objects: re-‐usable and searchable digital objects (e.g. texts, images, video clips) with pedagogical purpose and metadata (3tle, type, descrip3on, language, target group, difficulty…), separated from the soJware video image metadata Informa3on Objects (assets) Learning Pedagogical Object scenario Course
- 5. Learning Object Repositories ì Problems: ì teachers (re)create millions of digital learning resources (DLR) every year, few can be found or accessed by other teachers ì As quan33es of DLRs go up, quality goes down ì Difficult to reuse without adapta3on (closed formats) ì Solu3on: Learning Object Repository (LOR), online database for standardised, annotated and evaluated Learning Objects ì LOR is not a learning environment: school library metaphor
- 6. Decision points for a new LOR project ì Repository vs “referratory” ì Media/LO types, formats (e.g. video, tests, SCORM) ì Scope: only general/comprehensive educa3on? ì Localisa3on: na3onal vs global ì Hosted by the MoE, NGO, company, university ì Subject coverage: generic vs domain-‐specific ì Contributors, user roles
- 7. The main issues to be solved ì Metadata applica9on profile: balancing global (IEEE LOM, EUN LRE) and local perspec3ves (school system, curriculum structure, domain categories) ì Integra9on and interoperability with other systems (e.g. Moodle or repository federa3ons): standards, specifica3ons, interfaces (SQI, SPI), protocols (OAI/PMH) ì Quality assurance: by users, by moderators/reviewers, built-‐in edi3ng/assessment workflows ì Licensing of LOs: copyright vs copyleJ, Crea3ve Commons
- 8. The story of Estonian LOR ì 1997: a private ini3a3ve Miksike (miksike.ee), e-‐worksheets ì 1999: Tallinn Pedagogical University builds the portal Teachers’ Netgate for Tiger Leap Founda3on (community-‐oriented, CF) ì 2001: News-‐oriented TLF portal koolielu.ee, commercial CMS ì 2008: Helsinki UAD MediaLab and Tallinn University (TLU) team develop LeMill.net (within FP6 project Calibrate) ì 2009: the new version Koolielu 2.0 is developed by TLU team
- 9. Koolielu 2.0: concept ì Balance between three main dimensions: community, content, news (management was not considered priority ini3ally) ì Web 2.0 principles: users as content creators, friends, ac3vity stream, tags, RSS, dashboard (iGoogle style), widgets, embedding, recommenders ì Tight integra3on with LOR (Waramu) and federa3on with LRE ì Par3cipatory design, accompanied by research (design sessions to validate scenarios, paper/early/full prototypes)
- 10. Koolielu 2.0: services ì News – aggregated from various online sources ì Adver9sements – course offerings and job search ì Tools – recommended online tools or downloadable soJware ì Resources – repository of learning objects ì Discussions – tradi3onal online forum ì Communi9es – every user can ini3ate an ad-‐hoc community which will get automa3cally a dedicated collabora3on space, forum and other collabora3on tools
- 11. Koolielu 2.0: technical platform ì Adapta3on of Elgg: an open source (PHP/MySQL) social media plajorm, see elgg.org ì Learning Object Repository Waramu was made by TLU for an earlier project (MELT), now it was integrated with Elgg ì Waramu is Java-‐based middleware applica3on, no user interface, Service-‐Oriented Architecture ì Simple Query Interface, Simple Publishing Interface, OAI/PMH target for metadata harves3ng by EUN LRE
- 12. Koolielu 2.0: management ì One full-‐3me chief editor, two part-‐3me editors/journalists ì 17 subject moderators (1-‐2 for each main subject area): experienced teachers, working on-‐distance ì Training for teachers: included in the main course DigiTiger ì Ac3vi3es: Compe33ons, theme weeks, learning events, courses
- 13. Koolielu 2.0: future plans ì Elgg version upgrade (from 1.6 to 1.8) ì Professional development porjolio module ì Self-‐assessment tool DigiSelf ì Integra3on with other systems (EHIS, KIS, EKIS) ì Single Sign-‐On support (OAuth, OpenID, ID-‐card) ì Embeddable players for specific content: SCORM, QTI tests, CommonCartridge