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On 21 July 2008 an event "Sharing Vocabularies on the Web via SKOS", was held in the UK. It is now possible to take part of the presentations and recordings from that event. Some of them seem to be really interesting. In fact, the phenomenon Simple Knowledge Organization System is interesting.

This event, the third in ISKO UK’s KOnnecting KOmmunities series, was an opportunity to learn more about SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System), the up-and-coming standard for publishing controlled vocabularies on the Web.

The topic proved to be enormously popular. There were 94 people present coming from government, publishing and broadcasting agencies, public service organisations, commercial companies and academia. Reassuringly many practitioners were present including subject matter experts, librarians, information architects, software developers etc.
We were fortunate in having speakers from the forefront of SKOS development and implementation who were able to draw a general picture of the role of knowledge organization systems in the Semantic Web development but also guide us through the intricate details of what it means to express controlled vocabularies in such a way so that they their semantics can be exploited in information integration and discovery.

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 

I had almost forgotten about this animation explaining how SOA works. It is very pedagogical and easy to understand, and it explains it from an eFramework perspective.

Teemu Leinonen at the FLOSSE Posse blog writes about the Finnish National curriculum that has got its own wiki . It is an interesting idea, and it remind a bit about our project, "Marking the national curricula" (paper in PDF-format) where we set up the infrastructure (the Annofolio) needed for annotating the Swedish National Curriculum. I think that a Wiki, in combination with our Annofolio and the forthcomming Curriculum Exchange Format (in Swedish) could provide very interesting opportunities for managing the curricula, as well as for integrating, and linking it into teaching and learning in a transparent way and connecting the curriculum to digital resources used for learning.

This I have to think a little bit more about…

Min avhandling (Modularization of the learning architecture: supporting learning theories by learning technologies) har uppmärksammats på flera ställen vilket givetvis är jättekul!

• På KKS Framtidens lärande: Mer flexibla lärandemiljöer
• På Øysten Johanessens blogg: Fredrik Paulsson har disputert
• På Skolporten, Forskning & utveckling
• På 計畫贊助者 (?)
• På En IKT-pedagogs funderingar

Min förhoppning är att den ska läsas och att det ska bli diskussion. Jag har försökt skriva så att både datavetare och pedagoger kan ha utbyte av att läsa den och jag hoppas att jag har lyckats.

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.

I have not read this study, but by the press release it appears to be an interesting study. See also the project website and in the Guardian.

Press release

'Google Generation' is a myth, says new research

New report reveals the information needs of the researchers and learners of the
future

16th January, 2008. A new report, commissioned by JISC and the British Library,
counters the common assumption that the 'Google Generation' - young people born
or brought up in the Internet age - is the most adept at using the web. The report
by the CIBER research team at University College London claims that, although
young people demonstrate an ease and familiarity with computers, they rely on the
most basic search tools and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to
asses the information that they find on the web.

The report 'Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future' also shows that
research-behaviour traits that are commonly associated with younger users -
impatience in search and navigation, and zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying
their information needs - are now the norm for all age-groups, from younger pupils
and undergraduates through to professors.

The study calls for libraries to respond urgently to the changing needs of
researchers and other users and to understand the new means of searching
and navigating information. Learning what researchers want and need is crucial
if libraries are not to become obsolete, the report warns.

The findings also send a stark message to government - that young people are
dangerously lacking information skills. Well-funded information literacy
programmes are needed, it continues, if the UK is to remain as a leading
knowledge economy with a strongly-skilled next generation of researchers.

Dame Lynne Brindley DBE, Chief Executive of the British Library, said of
the report findings: "Libraries have to accept that the future is now.
At the British Library we have adopted the 'Wiki' view and the 'Beta'
mindset. We have seized many of the opportunities new technology offers
to inspire our users to learn, discover and innovate. However, we must
do more and welcome the report findings, particularly the need to equip
users of all age-groups with wider information and digital literacy skills."

Dr Malcolm Read, Executive Secretary of JISC, welcomed the publication of
the report, saying: "These findings add to our growing understanding of
subjects that should concern all who work in further and higher education -
the changing needs of our students and researchers and how libraries can
meet their needs. We hope that this report will encourage debate around
these important questions. We hope it will also serve to remind us all
that students and researchers will continue to need the appropriate skills
and training to help navigate an increasingly diverse and complex information
landscape."

Hittade denna artikel i Computer Sweden :

Microsoft samlar på sig patent för existerande teknik. Det gör att småföretag tvingas skriva på avtal som föreslås av Microsoft. Det blir för jobbigt och dyrt att bestrida de tveksamma patenten.

Jag behövde visserligen inte fler argument mot mjukvarapatent , men här kom just ytterligare ett. Det är dessutom ytterligare en orsak till att det är högst olämpligt att ha Microsofts VD Peter Kopelman i Umeå universitets styrelse! Här ägnar de sig uppenbarligen åt att systematiskt patentera andras arbete.

Nu har Spindeln lanserats! Detta har vi (Inst. för interaktiva medier och lärande, IML ) gjort tillsammans med MSU. Spindeln är en söktjänst för digitala lärresurser för skolan. Idén är att göra det enklare för lärare och elever att hitta relevanta digitala lärresurser. Med Spindeln är det ännu så länge möjligt att söka efter fria lärresurser. Tekniken som Spindeln bygger på är en direkt tillämpning av vår och KMR-gruppens forskning om Semanic Web, digitala arkiv och tekniker för att koppla samma arkiv.

Vi kommer successivt att koppla in fler arkiv. Den stora utmaningen just nu är att försöka höja kvaliteten på metadata i de olika arkiven. Den är minst sagt varierande och det finns en hel del att förbättra för att på det sättet få bättre sökresultat…

Här finns pressinformationen från Umeå universitet

Här finns mer information från MSU

I have tried to establish a time-line that illustrates the development of technology enhanced learning (TEL) in relation to pedagogical developments. However, it turned out to be harder than I expected, and there are several variations of the history to be found. All with their specific focus and perspective.

You can see my first attempt below. Please, feel free to comment on it!

A historical perspective on TEL. The figure that illustrates "Web 2.0" is the "Web 2.0 technology cloud ".

The SCAM project is more alive than ever! We have now moved everything from SourceForge to our own Track-based system. At the same time we have started a blog for SCAM , where news and other relevant information will be posted.

Today we have started our new blog for the SCAM project. The blog will be used to blog about news, thoughts and other relevant information regarding the SCAM project. There is a lot of things going on in the project right now. We are moving away from SourceForge in favor of our own Track system. This means that we have moved our SCAM web, mailing lists, code repository, downloads and so on to here .

Read the post here  

Ett allvarligt problem som skapas av Sveriges decentraliserade skolsystem är att det blir mycket svårare att få saker att fungera i ett större sammanhang. Det flesta kommuner tänker enbart inom ramen för den egna kommungränsen och inte att kommunens skolor ingår i ett större system och därför bör öppna upp för en, i vissa delar, gemensam infrastruktur genom att använda öppna standarder och arbeta med att nå nationellt koncensus. Förutom möjligheten att samarbeta skulle detta även skapa möjlighet för olika aktörer (kommunala och statliga lika väl som kommersiella) att bygga betydligt bättre IT-tjänster för skolan.

Ett av de största problemen i sammanhanget är hanteringen av användarinformation och digitala identiteter. Förutom att användarhantering ofta skapar en massa onödigt extraarbete ute i kommunerna (ofta hanteras användare i flera system istället för i en central katalog), så ställer det till en massa problem i olika sammanhang. Ett exempel på ett sådant sammanhang är nationella IT-tjänster med skolan som målgrupp. Det finns, nästan utan undantag, ett behov av att identifiera och auktorisera de elever och lärare som skall ges tillgång till en tjänst. Detta gäller för de IT-tjänster som tillhandahålls av myndigheter (exempelvis nationella prov från skolverket), men också tjänster från kommersiella aktörer (exempelvis läromedelsproducenter, webbtjänster eller liknande). Frånvaron av en gemensam infrastruktur för katalogtjänster och digitala identiteter kostar sannolikt åtskilligt för alla inblandade. Än värre är att skolan riskerar att bli utan en massa bra IT-tjänster för att det blir för dyrt och krångligt.

Jag har tjatat (ja, tjatat är nog rätt ord) om att det måste skapas en sådan gemensam, nationell infrastruktur (givetvis baserad på öppna standarder) för skolan sedan 1998 då jag skrev ihop mitt första papper om detta. Inom ramen för en nationell infrastruktur skall givetvis kataloginformation hanteras, men också digitala ID:n och gemensam inloggning (Single Sign-On, SSO ). Flera andra europeiska länder har detta sedan länge, bland annat frankrike. Tyvärr har det gått exceptionellt trögt i Sverige. Försök har gjorts inom ramen för MjukIs projektet (först på Skolverket i samband med ITiS och sedan på Myndigheten för skolutveckling ), men det har inte blivit något vidare resultat (jag har varit inblandad hela tiden så jag kan tyvärr inte skylla ifrån mig). Viljan har helt enkelt inte funnits hos vare sig kommuner eller intresseorganisationen; Svenska kommuner och landsting (SKL) .

I universitetsvärlden är det däremot annorlunda. Där har man länge arbetat med att skapa koncensus kring en sådan infrastruktur och även om inte alla har anslutit sig så pågår i alla fall ett seriöst arbete. Just nu händer mycket intressanta saker inom en organisation som heter SWAMI (Swedish Alliance for Middleware Infrastructure) . Där har ett projekt skapats (SWAMID ) för federering av digitala identiteter, baserat på de öppna standarder som finns för detta.

SWAMID – The identity federation for the Swedish higher education community
Our goal with SWAMID is that it shall be the only identity federation needed in the Swedish higher education community for the foreseeable future. We are therefore planning for SWAMID to provide an infrastructure for federated services with several federation technologies. Initially the identity federation will support CWAA , eduroam and Shibboleth (or SAML ). Depending on the demand in the community, more federation technologies will be added to SWAMID.

SWAMID är givetvis en pusselbit av många i en gemensam infrastruktur, men det är en viktig sådan.

Konkret innebär arbetet i SWAMI att studenter och anställda vid universitet och högskolor får en enda digital identitet som både är säker och som kan användas överallt där en digital identitet behövs. Identiteten kan även kopplas till framtida medborgaridentiteter och olika former av inloggning (smarta kort, biometri eller vad man nu vill). Effekterna av detta blir väldigt intressanta: Förutom att SWAMID-identiteten kan ge direkt tillgång till såväl lokala som nationella IT-tjänster, innebär det också att studerande och anställda vid ett universitet kan få tillgång till IT-tjänster (t.e.x trådlöst nätverk, utskrifter och liknande) på andra universitet – med sin vanliga inloggning. Det finns även ett europeiskt initiativ som heter Eduroam där motsvarande infrastruktur skapas på europeisk nivå.

SWAMI är precis den typ av samarbete som skolan behöver. Tänk om den digitala identiteten istället skapades redan när eleven börjar skolan för att sedan tas med till universitet och högskola? På vägen skulle man både spara pengar och eliminera en rad problem för lärare och elever, inte minst när det gäller antagningsförfarandet till gymnasium och högskola.

Det viktigaste är dock att detta skulle skapa en infrastruktur som gör det möjligt för olika aktörer att bygga IT-tjänster för skolan på en helt ny nivå.

Lär av universitet och högskola: öppna upp systemen och bygg en gemensam infrastruktur för skolan – baserat på öppna standarder!

[tags]infrastruktur, skolan, katalog, öppna standarder, SSO, mjuk infrastruktur, IKT och lärande, utbildningsinfrastruktur[/tags] 

The IEEE Journal "Learning Technology" has a special issue out on “Blogging as an Educational Technology”.

Technorati Tags: Blog, blogging, e-learning, educational technology

To understand the Learning Objects concept it is often described using metaphors. There are two main metaphors: the “Lego” metaphor and the “Atomic” metaphor. The Lego metaphor was the first metaphor to occur (as far as I know), and it describes Learning Objects as pieces of Lego building blocks that can be assembled to form larger learning units or modules. The Lego metaphor implies that it is very easy to assemble Learning Objects and that it can be done by anyone, without deeper prior knowledge. The Lego metaphor has been criticized for being over simplified. Critiques means that every Learning Object cannot be assembled with every other Learning Object, and that pedagogical knowledge and knowledge about instructional design is needed in order to do a god job.

This has lead to the adoption of the Atomic metaphor. The main idea of the Atomic metaphor is that not all Learning Objects can be assembled with every other Learning Objects, and that some Learning objects attracts certain Learning Object, while repelling other. The rules for how Learning Objects can be assembled and used are stricter and the “interfaces” tend to be more complex – as with chemistry. The atomic model is commonly regarded to be a more realistic model and is probably the most accepted metaphor.

However, when working on the article “Establishing technical quality criteria for Learning objects ” I came to think a little bit further than I have done before and I am not so sure any more about the superiority of the atomic metaphor. Even though the atomic Learning Object metaphor is favoured in several of my papers (as well as in others), it can be argued that the Lego metaphor has some advantages from the object technology perspective. If you think about Lego blocks: the most distinguishing quality of Lego blocks is that they have an extremely simple, but still powerful, interface for interacting with other pieces. This actually means that, with some limitations, all Lego pieces can be assembled together with any other Lego piece to form something new, that is more than the sum of the used Lego blocks, and that produces an added value. This doesn’t mean that anyone can build good and useful things, just because they can put together a number of Lego pieces – certain skills are still required to actually produce something useful.

As an example: this is the Lego production of my two-year-old son.

This is about as simple as it gets, and not particularly useful, but fun to build – if you are a two-year-old and has nothing to tear down.

Below on the other hand is the work of a slightly more skilled Lego builder.

This is a fully working differencing machine entirely built using ordinary Lego blocks.

So, it is possible to build simple things as well as complex things, using Lego, much thanks to the simple, but still powerful interface.

The basis for my reasoning about Lego is that, historically (from an object/component technology point of view) the frameworks and technologies that have the simplest (but still powerful) interfaces, and least complex rules have the best chance of surviving and being used. This becomes important when regarding Learning Objects from a technology perspective, and especially from a object technology perspective. It is very easy to assign properties to Learning Objects (both pedagogical and functional), but much harder to find a general, standardized way in which they can be implemented!

This is also in a way the core of our article on Establishing technical quality criteria for Learning Objects

Yesterday, I presented my paper titled "Establishing Technical Quality Criteria for Learning Objects". The idea of keeping the pedagogical process representation separated from the Learning Object is apparently very controversial. The fact that this is controversial also shows that there is a considerable distance between the pedagogical comprehension of Learning Objects, and the technical comprehension of Learning Objects. That the pedagogical process should not be hard-coded into the Learning Object does not mean that the pedagogical unit, used for learning, isn’t put into a pedagogical context by the use of a specific pedagogical approach. It just means that the taxonomy as well as the technical architecture and design need to be a little bit different in order to (technically) give Learning Objects the properties that they are usually ascribed.

When I discuss this with people, I get the feeling that this issue needs to be discussed much more and that there is a need for consensus building in order to reach a common understanding of terms and concepts to sort out how technical qualities and pedagogical qualities relates to each other. Pedagogical qualities have a strong relationship to technical quality – much stronger than most people like to think!