History of EdNa
Re-engineering EdNa Online
Technologies, Specs, Standards
Functional Advantages of MyEdna
Walkthrough
EdNA Online launched in 97
collaboration across states and across sectors
“K to gray” — kindergarten to lifelong learning
fully funded by gov’t
records built from combination of data entry and automated harvesting
only harvest from trusted sources
EdNA Metadata Standards v1.1
based on Dublin Core
nine mandatory elements (out of 15)
History of EdNA Online
Target audience
support teaching and learning form early childhood to adult/community education
services
access to curriculum resources, research, professional devleopment
pool of over 350,000 items to search (17,500 quality evaluated, 330,000 linked items, 50,000 items from external repositories)
500 mail lists supporting online communication
online newsletters (more than 16,000 subscribers)
4 million hits per month
Re-Engineering EdNA Online
why? stakeholders told them to
business service delivery models
from a retail website to aggregator/broker/provider of web services
retail — personalisation and portal services
broker — harvesting and federated searching
wholesale — web services
portal tech enable new service delivery alternatives
demand for more sophisticated resource discovery mechanisms
technical considerations
outsourcing arrangement
emerging technologies, specifications and open standards
open source software …. really “collaborative source”
[didn't name the software that's used]
use RSS, XML, SOAP
technologies and standards need to be open standards in order to collaborate and interoperate
web services
RSS feeds for news, recent items added
modiel of syndicating all content via RSS
XML APIs for Search and Browse
XML API for noticeboards/calendars, New Resources Added
SOAP for single sign-on
Publishing to handheld specs
Entry Level points to makee services easily available
HTML versions of most services available
Technologies, Specs, Standards
Resource Delivery: Dublin Core, EdNA Metadata Standard v1.1, RDF
Vocabulary: AGIFT, SCIS, ScOT, ATED, VOCED, OZJAC
Metadata Repository Interchange:
yadda yadda yadda too many standards to capture here.
based on J2EE
[technical architecture graphic ... too much to capture]
Linux, Apache, Tomcat based
Sun/Oracle for the database server
Jahia — open source content management system
walkthrough….
[hard to capture this in text]
shows lots of mechanisms where they are both consuming feeds and producing feeds for others to consume.
question from Stephen Downes: why using federated search as well as harvesting metadata?
answer: first, concern about “flooding” EdNA with metadata that may be less than stellar….that then can be addressed through federated search. second, some repositories don’t want their metadata harvested & will only allow search. federated searching will have its limitations, and EdNA recognizes that.
question: what is RSS.
[Whoa! That's a big question.] Stephen Downes provided a solid answer, focusing on the key elements link, title, description

Current system for education is not working
Affordances of the Net makes the difference
star trek metaphor: Google as the computer that can answer any question a la the Star Trek computer
need increase in quality, quantity, and interaction
different kinds of interactions (Anderson, 2002, Equivalency Theorem)
Learner/Teacher, Learner/Content, Learner/Learner, Teacher/Content, Teacher/Teacher, Content/Content (agents, content that is aware of itself)
From student-teacher to student-content
Look at ways to substitute student content interaction for student-teacher interaction (student-teacher is resource intensive and not scalable
From student-teacher to student-student
development of communities of inquiry (e.g. slashdot)
teachers gain from developing content
having students create the content for their studeies — why save all the learning for the teachers
Are those interactions equivalent?
strength in one of those three (student-teacher, student-content, student-student) allows for less emphasis on the other two
What is an Agent:?
autonomous, goal oriented, self-starting, operates more or less continuously, adaptable, network-enabled
really need a structured, properly tagged semantic web to work effectively
**** sample from u. of saskatechwan
http://www.cs.usask.ca/i-help
agents to help students connect to each other to get help
each students agent negotiates with the other students.
[comment: would make a cool Building Block for Blackboard]
Content Agents
update and refreshe content
manage IP rights through such structure rights data as ODRL Open Digital Rights Language (http://odrl.net)
repair and protect content
alter content in response to student models and contexts (user modeling)
Teacher Agents
marking, managing, tutoring, guiding, coordinating, scheduling
inserting new content into course web site, notifying and update as necessary
tracking developments in both discipline and scholarship of teaching.
two modes of thinking about the web
Structuralists (web as meaningful, semantic information)
Presentationalist (web as display and experience)
example: EMI, Experiments in Musical Intelligence
David Cope, UC Santa Cruz
http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/Emmy.html
agents that “learn” the style of composers and can then compose and play music in that style
Anderson: This is what we’ll be able to do in education
The Semantic Web
coined by Tim Berners-Lee
based on formal ontologies
will be many ontologies that have to talk and work together
tools of the semantic web
XML
RDF
[Laptop battery died! Rest of notes were taken by hand and transcribed later, during dessert. :-) That's one way to cut calories! :-) ]
ontology — a set of concepts
tools to create ontologies
DAML + OIL
OWL
tools to help define subject and relation to other subhjects
step one — tag LOs in ways they can be searched and retrieved
example for non-education: SportsML
moving beyond learning objects
problem: changing context may change LO’s function
education is not content
context needs to be tagged
SCORM — naive, “object should be independent of any learning context” (quote from ADL SCORM site)
EML — education markup language
Rob Koper @ Dutch Open University
http://eml.ou.nl
basic unit moves from LO to unit of study
EML is basis of IMS Learning Design spec
create a language for the IMS-LD
roles, objectives, activities, environment
IMS LD = EML Lite
spec divided into three levels
core elements
adds properties and conditions to control flow of design
sending messages/notifications
dropped DocBook for IMS Content Packaging spec
not backwards-compatible with first EML players
big problem: no existing players for IMS-LD
work being done by U. of Quebec, Gilbert Paquette
James Dalziel, WebMCQ (Australia)
[I saw the WebMCQ product recently -- good product]
next generation learning management systems takes content from various sources and aggregates it
[that's what an LMS does now? Or I think he means it's done automatically via agents]
problems: no dedicated editors, no players, no community, complex spec
conclusion: will change context of formal and informal learning
questions from audience:
how to get students to do all they can instead of all that is required?
[question from me]: Where are all the authoring tools?
answer: Where are all the players?
[comment: that was a frustrating answer. It's a chicken and egg kind of situation.]
question: who does the tagging?
question: Concern of agents run amok (tied to Star Trek example from beginning). How do agents know something about you? They’ll need to know that if they are to become co-teachers.
[final note: My experience was that most of the questions asked were good, but the answers were not forthcoming. Mostly the answers just acknowledged that the question was good and a question that needed ansewring. :-/]

NIGHMARES
* copyright and ownership
* ownership in the sense of trying to include a collaborative approach, resulting in “shared effort” ownership issues
* image database copyright
* copyright issues with tenure
* various ranges of technology expertise among participants
* part of the reasons people don’t know what a learning object is is because experts are still fighting over the definition
* LOVCOP (sp?) — virtual community of learning object theorists
* faculty development retention
* software compatibility — getting things to work together
* why should I invest so much of myself in this?
* how to present this to a tenure committee
* perceived “waste of money”
* scope/scalability of
* technology infrastructure stability issues, when the technology fails. (The example given was WebCT, though there were some mumblings about Blackboard as well ;-)
* people who present the technology don’t have a vision of what it is to be an educator … technology people who aren’t educators (Colleen: by nature, they’re very kinesthetic)
* lack of interest; luddites
* lack of context for using it effectively
* release time for faculty for LO dev but also for professional development
* computer literacy level; faculty need for support to use high end tool
* expectation that LOs must be for higher ed
* “less work to do things the way I’ve done them before”
[Comment: this is a very faculty intensive session and a lot of the "nightmare" comments center around frequent faculty complaints about not having enough time to use technology effectively]
* faculty’s lack of a desire to learn and improve their technology
* lack of incentives
* need to also remove the disincentives
* suspicion of technology
* lack of research base to demonstrate success
* people get turned onto MERLOT, but don’t continue to use it. Lots of excuses….
response: boils down to having a culture on campus that supports it, from the administration down
* faculty don’t want to incorporate other people’s content
* my response: actually faculty always incorporate other content (e.g. textbooks); it’s just a new way to incorporate other content (e.g. aggregating granular content)
DREAMS (SUCCESSES)
* mini-grant program to support faculty
* U. System of Georgia … online courses are developed collaboratively by a team (faculty, ID person, project coordinator)….courses are then adoptable by institutions that want to use them …. expecting faculty members to do it all isn’t scalable
[Comment: wow! what a great approach!]
* librarians as resources
* scaffolding to provide just-in-time training
* State of North Carolina — train the trainer workshop to train people on MERLOT….faculty had a peer-to-peer teacher training project (Western Carolina University).
* tenure guidelines were re-written.
* intellectual property as detrimental — very good comments that I didn’t capture becuase I was busy trying to get my
* train the trainer mdoel with release time, modeling best practices in professional development
* Marco Polo — learning object site
* my comment: following up on intellectual property, I plugged Creative Commons.
* Article in Educause Review on new millenial students [haven't seen it, will need to check it out]
* course management systems as an example of what faculty have embraced….
* try to sell instructional support staff more on MERLOT

Douglas MacLeod speaking . . .
“Donut Objects Repositories”
compares model to Tim Horton stores
number of stores (repositories) 2200
number of donuts (objects) 2 million donutes
number of employees (researchers) 55,000 employees
unit cost 75 cents
business model: cheap stuff, come back often
comparison of LOR to Donut repositories
Business model: pricey stuff, don’t ocme back again
communities of practice pathetic
information architecture: way too complicated
eduSource
Will create a testbed of linked and interoperable learning object repositories across Canada
Provide a forum for the ongoing development of the associated tools systems, protocols and practices that will support such an infrastructure
comparison to trading cards (some Magic-like trading card game)
uses 8-year old child as example
all of the metadata on the card
image is a mnemonic tool — helps the “user” remember the rest of the information on the card
unit cost very cheap
communities of practice: rabid!
[graphic -- can't represent in text]
edusoure user inteface
learning objects
Search Tools Tagging Tools Packaging Tools Rights Mngmt Tools
Repository Registry Web Services Registry
will be giving eduSource away as open source [didn't mention what license]
Learning Object Repositories
compares to buildings, e.g. Nat’l Assembly in Quebec City
compares to games, Ages Beyond Myst (Cam, Chat, D’ni Guild Forums, Links, Goodies, Open Source, Stills)
what we need:
simplicity of tim hortons
fervor of yuvio(sp?) trading cards
community of online games
robustness of buildings
= long lasting impact
how do we do that
change the unit costs: e.g iTunes shows people will pay a dollar
business model: cheap stuff, come back all the time
creat rabid communties of practice
information architecture transparent, powerful, simpler
worflow: foolproof
a national network
all different kinds of content and metadata repositories
connected
content re-purposing
technical assistance
users and more users
can become an international network
David Porter…
Observatoinal Ternds
PSPS
blending of materials and locations
blending of work and life
Evolutionary Trends
just in case to just in time
job-centered world to portfolio of work
authority based learnign to experiential learning management (inst. vs. personal)
from hierarchical knowledge system to flat social knowledge systems
Learning Models
personal empowerment
formal learning
euniversities
communties of practice
p2p networks
pull learning
personal portals
Book: Wisdom Sits in Places
ethnography about place
wisdom in our domain
systemic initiatives
core technologies
standards and specs
local initiatives
Shaping Learning Object Theory
shaping object theory to meet your personal needs
you need to determine where you will play
quotes from Tom Barron, WIlliam Horton, David Wiley
Learning Object Models
granular objects
storage in databases
flexibility
customizability
interoperability
ease of use, search management
increased value through re-use
people aren’t stating what the value prop for LO is
not demonstrating it either
understanding the atomic structure of object content
it’s more like DNA than Lego
with regard to repurposability
important we understand at what level we can play
media objects
lessons
units of study
courses
authors/developers —> CMS & Authoring Tools —> Object-Based Content —> LMS —> Learners
only 2 or 3 LMS systems on the planet that can do that on a seamless and transparent way (didn’t name them!)
output for multiple instructional methods
needs to be output for clasroom or online resources
Lessons from the web generation, e.g. Napster
users will want to
…try before they buy
…buy by the piece
…mix and match
…reshape and repurpose materials
…want to share
…publish their own mixes
Context for the web generation
standards and specifications
p2p computing
personal publishing tools
finding and using convivial tools is the tipping point
some cool tools starting to emerge
eduSplash
Recombo
Possibility Network
p2p tools: Groove, Colloquia, Magi
interesting tools for building self-managed learning environments
eduSplash
turning your laptop or workstation into a network savvy p2p repository
part of the POOL project??
open source, free download
empowering individuales
allowing them to build community around creating and storing rich objects
Recombo
integrated with MS Office
save as web page, save as SCO, save as SCORM package, send SCO to…
Where this path Leads
Possibility Network
built in Indiana
builds a personal learning assistant
web services powering a personal portal
aggregating information form a variety of post-secondary providers
a personal learning strategy designer