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EdReNe Newsletter 7

EdReNe finished its series of reports with recommendations and lots of experiences on educational repositories

Building successful educational repositories

EdReNe’s consolidated recommendations report sums up the key points that have emerged during discussions and presentations throughout the three year project period of the EdReNe network. The conclusions are presented as recommendations targeting most of the stakeholders of educational repositories. Recommendations are grouped according to the four major themes: Repository strategies, Engaging users, Rights Issues, and Standards and interoperability…
(read more in EdReNe Consolidated recommendations report)

Planning for success – repository strategies

Make sure you have a clear business case for your repository, engage early with all relevant stakeholders, have a strong focus on integration, open standards and build upon existing communities of practice. These are some of the recommendations for building and maintaining a successful educational repository…
(read more in EdReNe synthesis report on Repository Strategies)

Bringing the buzzing teacher room online

Many educational repositories are in the process of adding community features with the intention to build a more active and engaged user community. Competent and engaged community management and implementing best-of-breed designs for repository functionality are key to success …
(read more in synthesis report on Engaging Users)

Are current standardization bodies in sync with actual user needs?

It seems striking that many of the most successful repository initiatives – measured in terms of active users – have not heavily engaged with educational technology standards … This leads to the question of whether current standardization bodies and organizations are in sync with actual user needs…
(read more in EdReNe synthesis report on standards and interoperability)

Copyright legislation is not in tune with educators’ expectations

The most general conclusions that can be drawn from the discussions so far are that current copyright legislation is not in tune with what would be expected and considered fair in relation to education, and that currently the strongest and most often heard response from the educational sector is to use open licensing while waiting for a reform of copyright law…
(read more in EdReNe synthesis report on rights issues)

EdReNe’s 4^th strategic seminar took place in Barcelona

March 24th – 26th 2010

EdReNe’s next seminar will be in Copenhagen October 6th-7th 2010.

It is important to continue knowledge sharing among the members of the EdReNe

Marina Losada Yanéz, representing the co-hosting member UPF, and Leo Højsholt-Poulsen, UNI•C, opened the 4^th strategic seminar.

The seminar dug deeper into EdReNe’s four overall themes: which repository strategies work, how do we engage users and producers, which are the relevant standards to ensure interoperability, and how do members address the complex handling of intellectual property rights.

Repositories in Spain and Catalonia

Learning Object Repositories: a learner centred perspective

In an ideal Learning Object Repository the act of browsing and/or searching for resources should be a learning experience in itself!

Julià Minguillón, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, on Learning Object Repositories with a learner centred perspective.

Julià’s presentation:
www.slideshare.net/jminguillona
files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO15/765.ppt

Open access institutional repositories in Spain

It’s necessary to adopt institutional policies to promote open access. There are other problems, but the single most important issue is to increase the content and for that reason policies are vital.

Ernest Abadal, Department of Library and Information Science, University of Barcelona, on facts and figures about Spanish repositories. Ernest Abadal is a member of the research group “Open Access to Science in Spain”.

Ernest’s presentation:
files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO15/766.ppt

Ernest Abadal about
Spanish repositories

EdReNe’s four themes

Repository Strategies

On-line resources and repositories, the strategies of Andalucía

The adopted approach is a mixture of the Andalucian model and the national one. It is massive, with centralized administration, free software and content, a school server with Moodle and MediaWiki, computers to the students, interactive whiteboards, and a digital content package with teaching resources to all teachers.

Juan Rafael Fernández, Andalusian Educational Authorities and secondary school teacher, on the And@red ICT Schools and Escuela 2.0 projects.

Juan’s presentation:
files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO15/788.mp4

Engaging users and producers

Open Content, Wikiwijs and Innovation platform

The open content exists - the teachers must also be able to find it – and to use it! At the moment the users of wikiwijs are ‘consumers’ instead of ‘prosumers’. They are looking for ‘out-of-the-box’ content to use in their classes. The project works with schools to make the teachers share; many obstacles must be tackled in this field.

Linda le Grand, VO-raad, Netherlands (Board of Secondary Schools), on the project Innovatieplatform-VO (innovation platform).

Linda’s presentation:
files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO15/787.pptx
Wikiwijs: www.wikiwijs.nl/sector/

Building systems for mobile learning, knowledge and resource sharing

Mobile resources are not just a converted version of existing learning resources. You have to look at the pedagogy to make them fit a mobile learning situation.

Jill Attewell, Technology for Learning, LSN, on MoLeNet.

Jill’s presentation:
files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO15/772.ppt

Jill Attewell, MoLeNet

Standards and interoperability

ASPECT project’s initial results on the implementation of standards

Users don’t care about metadata or standards. They care about whether they can find the objects. An efficient and easy to use search tool is essential. The teachers use Google to find educational material and they use Google almost every day. A large majority of the teachers in the project did not know the LRE.

Àgueda Gras-Veláquez, EUN, on standards and interoperability from a user perspective, and an introduction to the LRE and ASPECT - Adopting Standards and Specifications for Educational Content.

Àgueda’s presentation:
files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO15/778.pdf

Rights issues

The impact of Creative Commons

We must know if we want to allow users to reuse and remix and under which conditions and requirements - Not mentioned equals not allowed.

Version 3.0 of the CC licenses is more robust and clarifies some aspects related to moral rights and rights collective management

Ignasi Labastida i Juan, Office for Knowledge Dissemination, Universitat de Barcelona, and Creative Commons Spain and Catalonia, on Creative Commons’ focus on activities in the support of Open Education Resources (OER).

Ignasi’s presentation:
files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO15/767.ppt

New possibilities and threats for authors in a digital world

The one thing that I fear most is two keyboard shortcuts: Copy and Paste. The problem is that the teachers also take bits and pieces and assembled them in new ways. In this way they will eventually stop buying my book as they can ‘write their own’. As an author I cannot work for free, I have to make a living. My recommendation to the repository owners is: Should writers and publishers use your repository you also have to protect the copyrights of the content provider.

Thomas Meloni Rønn, BFU, on the possibilities and threats for an author and publisher in the digital world.