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DECOM 2008 is organised in partnership by the European Learning Industry Group (ELIG) and its member, Giunti Labs, the leading European provider of online and mobile learning content management solutions. It will be held on 23rd of October, in Sestri Levante, North West Italy. The invited delegates will be able to improve their understanding of new generation learning content production, management, sharing and distribution models which will empower the Educational Publishing Industry in this new millennium.

More at http://www.decom2008.com/

The deadline for submitting papers to the Second International Workshop on  Search and Exchange of e-le@rning Materials (SE@M’08) has been extended to the 30th of June.

Second International Workshop on Search and Exchange of e-le@rning Materials (SE@M’08)
(Formerly Learning Object Discovery & Exchange - LODE1)
 
 
CALL FOR PAPERS — NEW DEADLINE: JUNE 30, 2008 
 
The SE@M workshop is held in conjunction with the 3rd European Conference on
Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL’08 - http://www.ectel08.org/), Maastricht School
of Management, Maastricht, The Netherlands, September 17-19, 2008.
 
CONTEXT AND MOTIVATION
Creating good, pedagogically sound and effective learning resources incurs
substantial costs, so avoiding duplication of development efforts is important. The
TEL community has been and is still dedicating a lot of energy to the creation of
better and more reusable learning resources. Some of these efforts in the sphere of 
reusability have matured enough to lead to the creation of standards such as the IEEE
Learning Object Metadata, the IMS Content Package, or the IMS Common Cartridge.
Nowadays, the number of reusable educational resources available online, for free or
by subscription, is huge but most of these resources are “hidden” in repositories and
cannot be easily found, hampering their potential use and reuse.
 
Over the past few years, researchers and practitioners have started to address these
issues. Several initiatives worldwide (such as the EUN Learning Resource Exchange,
GLOBE, CORDRA) are developing solutions for federating e-learning systems and
unlocking the educational content hidden in repositories. Started last year, the work of
the IMS Group on Learning Object Discovery & Exchange aims at supporting these
initiatives by developing a set of specifications that facilitate the discovery and
retrieval of distributed learning resources.
 
The main goals of the international workshop on search and exchange of e-learning
materials are to bring together researchers and practitioners working in the field of
learning resource retrieval, facilitate the exchange between them and foster future
collaborations. It aims at offering a forum where these researchers and practitioners
can discuss theoretical aspects, open issues, and innovative approaches and share the
latest advances in the state of the art and practices for discovering and exchanging
learning content.
 
The dominant focus of this year’s workshop will be on the presentation of both long
and short refereed papers. We also plan to include a keynote speech and a panel
discussion.
                                                

Note: It has been decided to rename the workshop: “international workshop on
search & exchange of e-le@rning materials (SE@M)” to avoid any confusion with
the work of IMS on Learning Object Discovery and Exchange (IMS LODE). 
 
 2
 
TOPICS OF INTEREST (include, but are not limited to)
• Infrastructures for learning resource discovery and exchange
o Interoperable content and metadata repositories
o Protocols for exposing content
o Federations of learning resources
o Service registries
• Rich description of resources
o Metadata
o Standards and application profiles
o Automatic metadata generation versus human indexing
o Intellectual property and metadata
o Contextual Attention Metadata
o Mapping and crosswalks between metadata standards
• Discovering content
o User profiling for more accurate resource discovery
o Retrieval of learning resources (searching, browsing)
o Content aggregation
o Interoperable query languages
o Harvesting versus federated searching
o Enhanced search mechanism (sorting, ranking)
o Inclusion of other type of content (library, cultural heritage)
o Recommendation systems
o Quality aspects
• Exchanging content
o Resource identification
o Open content and reusable resource licensing
o Reliable auditing (tracking, reporting) 
o DRM, licensing and content protection
• WEB-2.0 approaches (folksonomies, content syndication) 
• Semantic web approaches
 
 SUBMISSIONS
Authors are invited to submit original unpublished research as full papers (max. 10 pages) or
work-in-progress as short papers (max. 5 pages). All submitted papers will be peer-reviewed
by three members of the program committee for originality, significance, clarity and quality.
Accepted papers will be published online as EC-TEL workshop proceedings as part of the
CEUR Workshop proceedings series. CEUR-WS.org is a recognized ISSN publication series,
ISSN 1613-0073.
 
Moreover, the two best papers of the workshop will be published in a special issue of the
International Journal of Technology-Enhanced  Learning
(IJTEL –  http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalCODE=ijtel )
 
Authors should use the Springer LNCS format (http://www.springer.com/lncs ).

For camera-ready format instructions, please see “For Authors“ instructions at
http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html .
All questions and submissions should be sent to: seam2008@eun.org

IMPORTANT DATES
• Paper Submission: June 30, 2008
• Notification of acceptance: July 13, 2008
• Camera Ready Submission: August 10, 2008
• Workshop date: September 17, 2007
 
ORGANISERS
David Massart, Jean-Noël Colin and Frans Van Assche
European Schoolnet (EUN), Belgium
 
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
• Vladimir Batagelj, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia 
• Erik Duval, KUL, Belgium 
• Mike Halm, PennState University, USA 
• Manuel Kolp, UCL, Belgium 
• Robert Kristofl, BMUKK, Austria 
• Eugenijus Kurilovas, SMM, Lithuania 
• Jon Mason, InterCog, Australia
• Cu D. Nguyen, Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK-IRST), Italy
• Gilbert Paquette, Teluq, Canada 
• Fredrik Paulsson, Umeå University, Sweden 
• Tomasz Orzechowski, AGH, Poland 
• Alain Pirotte, UCL, Belgium 
• Daniel Rehak, Learning Systems Architecture Lab and Daniel Rehak Consulting LLC, USA 
• Griff Richards, SFU, Canada 
• Bernd Simon, Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, Austria 
• Stefaan Ternier, KUL, Belgium 
• Tsuneo Yamada, NIME, Japan 

Second International Workshop on Search and Exchange of e-le@rning Materials (SE@M’08)

This call is open until June 22nd.

CONTEXT AND MOTIVATION
 
Creating good, pedagogically sound and effective learning resources incurs
substantial costs, so avoiding duplication of development efforts is important. The
TEL community has been and is still dedicating a lot of energy to the creation of
better and more reusable learning resources. Some of these efforts in the sphere of 
reusability have matured enough to lead to the creation of standards such as the IEEE
Learning Object Metadata, the IMS Content Package, or the IMS Common Cartridge.
Nowadays, the number of reusable educational resources available online, for free or
by subscription, is huge but most of these resources are “hidden” in repositories and
cannot be easily found, hampering their potential use and reuse.
 
Over the past few years, researchers and practitioners have started to address these
issues. Several initiatives worldwide (such as the EUN Learning Resource Exchange,
GLOBE, CORDRA) are developing solutions for federating e-learning systems and
unlocking the educational content hidden in repositories. Started last year, the work of
the IMS Group on Learning Object Discovery & Exchange aims at supporting these
initiatives by developing a set of specifications that facilitate the discovery and
retrieval of distributed learning resources.
 
The main goals of the international workshop on search and exchange of e-learning
materials are to bring together researchers and practitioners working in the field of
learning resource retrieval, facilitate the exchange between them and foster future
collaborations. It aims at offering a forum where these researchers and practitioners
can discuss theoretical aspects, open issues, and innovative approaches and share the
latest advances in the state of the art and practices for discovering and exchanging
learning content.
 
The dominant focus of this year’s workshop will be on the presentation of both long
and short refereed papers. We also plan to include a keynote speech and a panel
discussion.

Jag har fått förmånen att bli gästbloggare under ca 3-4 veckor på  "The Swedish Learning Space ". Ska bli kul! Jag gör detta i samband med konferensen Online Educa Berlin.

I går var jag på ett möte om digital kompetens på KK-stiftelsen. Mötet hade anordnats av Skolverket och syftet var att diskutera begreppet "digital kompetens". Jag tycker egentligen inte om begreppet digital kompetens, men det hör inte hit just nu…

Anledningen till detta är att det finns långt gångna planer på att faktiskt skriva in IT och digital kompetens i skolans styrdokument! Det vore en stor välgärning och då går det inte längre att komma undan att ta till sig IT i skolan. Utgångspunkten för diskussionen var ett PM om digital kompetens från Skolverket. Dokumentet bygger delvis på den definition som gjorts inom EU där man definierat digital kompetens som en av 8 grundkompetenser - tillsammans med mer "traditionella" grundkompetenser, så som läsa, skriva, räkna osv.

Diskussionen blev över förväntan bra och mötet kändes faktiskt riktigt meningsfullt. Framförallt var det intressant att få en inblick i hur man tänker kring detta på Skolverket, eller åtminstone hur Stefan och Jan på Skolverket resonerar. Dessutom gillar jag den öppna attityden och viljan att bedriva en process med öppenhet, diskussion och många deltagare, där man lever som man lär och utnyttjar tekniken. Jag hoppas att bidrar till att skapa en ny syn och attityd till myndigheters roll och hur myndigheter bedriver sitt arbete - inte minst hos myndigheterna själva. Det finns faktiskt även andra tecken på att en förändring sakta men säkert håller på att ske i detta avseende.

Förhoppningsvis tar de intryck av resultatet av gårdagens diskussioner när digital kompetens 2.0 utvecklas på Skolverket. Framförallt hoppas jag att man betonar betydelsen av lärares digitala kompetens och vikten av att förstå vilken oerhörd påverkan tekniken har på samhället och på i princip allt som sker i samhället. Globaliseringen, som den sker idag, skulle sannolikt inte vara möjlig utan IT, 11:e september skulle sannolikt inte ha inträffat utan IT - med allt vad det har fört med sig (som exempelvis att de beslagtar barnens juice i säkerhetskontrollen på flyget) och så vidare. För att till fullo förstå vikten av IT så måste man först förstå att det förändrar hela samhället. För att kunna vara med och påverka denna förändring måste man förstå den. För att lära sig förstå den måste skolan komma in på banan igen.

Vidare hoppas jag att man släpper det fokus som finns på konsumtion (söka och använda), respektive produktion av information. Det är tyvärr ett ganska framträdande fokus i EU:s definition. Det datorer är bäst på ar faktiskt att bearbeta information, och det kommer att få en allt större betydelse. Även om de flesta av oss explicit söker information, med exempelvis Google, så går utvecklingen mot en allt mer kontextanpassad informations"sökning", där vi inte explicit söker efter information med sökord. Istället är informationen kontextberoende och vi får tillgång till den i det sammanhang där vi behöver den via olika verktyg som hanterar detta åt oss (gärna som en del av den semantiska webben). Detta utan att vi egentligen riktigt vet vad som händer "bakom kulliserna" och kanske inte heller vilka källor som är med och spelar. Denna typ av verktyg och tjänster börjar redan dyka upp så sakterliga. Tjänster kopplas sedan med andra tjänster som på olika sätt utnyttjar och processar information och tjänster från andra tjänster osv. tills vi får komplexa tjänster som bygger på många, löst sammankopplade tjänster och informationskällor. Låter det komplicerat? Det är värre än så - därför är tekniken så viktig att förstå  och behärska!

Jag hoppas också att man betonar lärarutbildningens roll! Det börjar vara dags för lärarutbildningen att vakna  upp. Att man planerar att skriva in digital kompetens i  skolans styrdokument kan förhoppningsvis fungera som en väckarklocka. Eller?

Dessa resonemang går att utveckla hur mycket som helst - och det kanske jag gör någon gång, men nu föredrar jag att sova…

Min kollega Elza har också skrivit lite om sina intryck på sin blogg  

Below is the call for a workshop with an interesting theme (at least if you find Learning Objects and repositories interesting ) that will be held at the 2nd European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL07).

 ***We apologize for cross-postings***

First International Workshop on Learning Object Discovery & Exchange (LODE 2007)

CALL FOR PAPERS

The LODE workshop is held in conjunction with the 2nd European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL07), Crete, Greece, September 17-20, 2007

CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVES

Although the use of learning (content) management systems is becoming common in most educational organizations and the number of educational resources available online, for free or by subscription, is huge, most of these resources are hidden in repositories and cannot be easily found, which hampers their potential use and reuse.

The goal of the workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners working at unlocking the educational content hidden in repositories and facilitating the retrieval and exchange of this content. The workshop aims at providing an international forum to highlight the state-of-the-art and discuss the issues and innovative approaches in the field.  Therefore, the workshop welcomes original/position/work-in-progress/experience papers on all aspects related to the discovery and retrieval of distributed learning resources. Submissions that identify new issues and focused directions for future work in the area are also welcome.

The workshop will be strongly discussion-oriented. To that effect, all accepted papers and posters will be made available online before the workshop at http://fire.eun.org/lode2007/.

TOPICS OF INTEREST (include, but are not limited to)

* Reusable resources
o Resource identification
o Open content and reusable resource licensing
* Metadata
o Standards and application profiles
o Automatic metadata generation vs human indexing
o Intellectual property and metadata
o Mapping and crosswalks between metadata standards
* Repositories
o Interoperable content and metadata repositories
o Protocols for exposing content
* Discovering content
o User profiling for more accurate resource discovery
o Content aggregation
o Service Registries
o Interoperable query languages
o Harvesting vs federated searching
o Enhanced search mechanism
o Inclusion of other type of content (library, cultural heritage)
o Recommendation systems
o Quality aspects
* Exchanging content
o Reliable auditing (tracking, reporting)
o DRM, licensing and content protection
* WEB-2.0 approaches (folksonomies, content syndication)
* Semantic web approaches

SUBMISSIONS

Authors are invited to submit original unpublished research as full papers (8 pages), work-in-progress as short papers (max. 4 pages) or position statements (max. 2 pages).
All submitted papers will be peer-reviewed by three members of the program committee for originality, significance, clarity and quality. Accepted papers will be published online as EC-TEL workshop proceedings as part of the CEUR Workshop proceedings series. CEUR-WS.org is a recognized ISSN publication series, ISSN 1613-0073. Authors should use the Springer LNCS format (http://www.springer.com/lncs ). For camera-ready format instructions, please see "For Authors" instructions at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html.

All questions and submissions should be sent to: lode2007 @ eun . org

IMPORTANT DATES

* Paper Submission: June 20, 2007
* Notification of acceptance: July 15, 2007
* Camera Ready Submission: August 15, 2007
* Workshop dates: September 17 or 18, 2007

ORGANIZERS

* David Massart, European Schoolnet (EUN), Belgium
* Jean-Noel Colin, Sun Microsystems, Belgium

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

* Kerry Blinco, DEST, Australia
* Erik Duval, KUL, Belgium
* Mike Halm, PennState University, USA
* Marek Hatala, SFU, Canada
* Robert Kristofl, BMBWK, Austria
* Franois Magnan, Teluq, Canada
* Jon Masson, InterCog, Australia
* Martin Morrey, Intrallect, UK
* Gilbert Paquette, Teluq, Canada
* Fredrik Paulsson, UmeΠUniversity, Sweden
* Tomasz Orzechowski, AGH, Poland
* Alain Pirotte, UCL, Belgium
* Daniel Rehak, University of Memphis, USA
* Griff Richards, SFU, Canada
* Bernd Simon, WirtschaftsuniversitŠt Wien, Austria
* James Simon, Sun Microsystems, USA
* Stefaan Ternier, KUL, Belgium
* Tsuneo Yamada, NIME, Japan

ABOUT EC-TEL07

After the success of EC-TEL06, the Second European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning provides a unique forum for all research related to TEL, including its interactions with knowledge management, business processes and work environments.
This is a competitive and broad forum for TEL research in Europe and world-wide through specialized workshops and the main conference. EC-TEL07 provides unique networking possibilities for participating researchers throughout the week and includes project meetings and discussions for ongoing and new research activities supported by the European Commission. See http://www.ectel07.org/ for details.

I have uploaded my article on "Establishing technical quality criteria for Learning Objects" that I will present at the eChallenges 2006 conference.

Read it here! Comments are welcome… 

IML tog hem båda utmärkelserna för "bästa knytkalasbidrag" för sina presentationer på knytkalaset på Netlearning 2006 i Ronneby .

Bästa Knytkalasbidrag - förmiddag: F:17 New Technologies, pedagogical and professional development

Bästa Knytkalasbidrag - eftermiddag: E:18 Podcasting i lärarutbildningen

Det är bara att gratulera Alison, Peter och Krister som stod för bedriften

Peter Karlberg och Bengt-Ola Jacobsson skriver om de seminarier som arrangerades av Myndigheten för Skolutveckling, SKL och IT-politiska strategigruppen anordnade torsdag och fredag i förra veckan. Kul att det blev ett lyckat seminarium! Synd att jag inte hade möjlighet att åka…

"Ibland känns det ju rätt meningsfullt att lägga ner arbete på att sprida information relaterat till IT i skolan. Förra veckan ordnade min myndighet tillsammans med SKL och IT-politiska strategigruppen ett seminarium som huvudsakligen fick ett mycket gott mottagande. Per-Ola Jacobsson tillhör kategorin av mycket entusiastiska deltagare. Han missar dock att Myndigheten för skolutbveckling var en av arrangörerna (trots att jag agerade moderator under hela seminariet) och att Apple tillhandahöll en av föredragshållarna eftersom Maine-exemplet just har Apple som leverantör." (Peter Karlberg )

"Ett synnerligen minnesvärt seminarium: “Bästa läsare! Det finns seminarium och föredragshållare som förmår att etsa sig fast i medvetandet. I förra veckan hade jag förmånen att få vara inbjuden till IT-universitetet i Göteborg. Värd för arrangemanget var Närings & Industridepartementet, SKL samt Apple. Gemensamt programinnehåll denna dag var IT i skolan och hur samverkan kan skapas för att ge våra barn och ungdomar det som dom verkligen har rätt till; en utbildning som är av högsta kvalité och dessutom är hållbar inför framtidens behov. Att frågan om IT i skolan oftast utifrån en svensk skolhorisont handlar om resurser som inte finns börjar kännas sanslöst trist att lyssna till. Borde inte diskussionen snarare handla om vilka prioriteringar som måste göras i budget och om våra skolor verkligen har råd att inte tänka systematiskt och framåtblickande kring IT i skolan? Därför var det saliggörande att just denna dag och det högkvalitativa innehåll som ramade in programmet utgick från de goda exemplen. Från England och USA hämtades föredragshållare som med entusiam lät de församlade åhörarna tala möjligheter och inte fastna i att det inte går.” (Bengt-Ola Jacobsson )

Läs Peters hela inlägg på http://peter.karlberg.org/articles/2006/05/13/ett-synnerligen-minnesv-auml-rt-seminarium
och Per-Olas inlägg på http://jacobson.blogg.se/110506165448_ett_synnerligen_minnesvrt_semina.html

 On-line seminar with Rob Abel, CEO of IMS

In the last eight years there has been a dramatic rise in the infusion of certain types of learning products into the higher education landscape. What can we expect over the next eight years?

Join educational researcher and CEO of the IMS Global Learning Consortium, Rob Abel, for a unique perspective on which categories of products will succeed in the next eight years and why. In this talk, Rob will cite recent ground breaking research in Internet-supported learning trends, vendor satisfaction, and open source software to make his case.
 
Date                 Start Time     End Time     Time Zone
May 17, 2006     2:00pm        3:00pm        EDT

Register at http://www.horizonwimba.com/eventreg/participant/registration.php?eventid=889

We have authored a paper titled "Establishing technical quality criteria for Learning Objects". The paper will be published at the eChallenges 2006 conference and will be made avaliable for dowload in connection with the conference.

Abstract: The idea of Learning Objects is now a widely accepted concept for the delivery of modularized e-learning content. Originating from Object Oriented programming, the concept has evolved to embrace almost everything that is digital. Based on literature, experience from implementation and a comparative study of Learning Objects, we argue that the concept needs to be more clearly defined in order to deliver what it promises. We argue that most implementations are not technology- and pedagogy-neutral and do not support sophisticated reuse. In the conclusion, six action areas for establishing technical quality criteria are suggested: a narrow definition, a mapping taxonomy, more extensive standards, and best practise for use of existing standards, architecture models, and the separation of pedagogy from the supporting technology of Learning Objects.

Ambjörn Naeve and Miguel-Angel Sicilia have written a very interesting paper that will be published at the ADALE International Workshop on Adaptive Learning and Learning Design .

Abstract. Activity or process models to learning represent the basic material elements of any learning event. However, the organizational learning setting requires the consideration of objectives outside the individual, and the transformation of these activities into measurable, efficient behavior. In order to process learning activities with technological tools, such characteristics must be properly modeled. This paper describes a model for such process-oriented view on learning in organizations, and sketches how that framework could be integrated with IMS Learning Design, a language for the description of pedagogical arrangement of multi-role activities.

 The full paper will be published soon…

 Från peter.karlberg.org

Nu finns lite mer information om konferensen:

Rektorsakademien har gjort en liten videocast med information om konferensen:

Direktlänk

On wednesday, I gave a speech (an orientation) about the Semantic Web at SoftDev 2.0. The presentation was built on a couple of examples (real as well as fictional) from e-learning. The presentation can be downloaded from here . (it is partly in Swedish and partly in English)

Participate in the virtual conference: "Learning objects – repositories, networks and cooperation – status in the Nordic-Baltic countries". 24-28 april 2006 at NordFlex.Net!.

Programme

Monday 24 April:

Liisa Lind, producer, National Board of Education, Finland Quality is a moving target - defining quality criteria for online learning resources

Tuesday 25 April:

Sveinn Olafsson, administrator Iceland Consortia and Jón Ingi Skúlason, consulting engineer at Linuhonnun: Sharing learning resources. Network and consortia - joint access and use of electronic subscription and databases in the field of engineering.

Wednesday 26 April:

Ambjörn Naeve, senior researcher, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH): Democratic networks of learning objects with support from exchange of experience

Thursday 27 April:

Kaj Engen Nielsen, project manager, Center for Fleksibel Voksenuddannelse, Sønderjylland: Developing learning objects – introduction to easy production of interactive online learning materials and publishing on Internet. Sharing learning objects – and future visions

Friday 28 April:

Sirje Virkus, researcher, Tallinn Pedagogical University: Overview of Learning Objects in Estonia

Tore Hoel, project manager, e-standar -project, Høgskolen i Oslo : Learning Resources – how are they used in Learning? Some reflections after a small Norwegian project aiming at bridging the gap between the library and educational communities.

In the discussion after the daily online session is closed, a dedicated Moodle will be open all the 24 hours. We look forward to a lively discussion. The overall topic of the discussion:

Is it possible to make a joint effort in the Nordic-Baltic countries to make easy access to learning objects in our own country and across the borders?

Using Moodle
Dear participants!

More information at NordFlex Virtual Conference web site: http://www.nordflex.net