EdReNe – Current state of educational repositories – national overview

Estonia is a very small country. The market for e-learning materials is almost missing. (Approximately 600 schools, 160,000 students and 15,000 teachers). 30 percent of the schools are Russian speaking (schools are separate). The wifi and internet situation is one of the best in Europe. 12 students per computer (in schools). Educational materials must be approved by the ministry (textbooks).

Traditional textbooks are still preferred by a majority of the teachers.

During the last 10 years TLF have supported creation of very different items from simple e-worksheets to complex learning environments for science.

Koolielu (means “school life”) is a portal where teachers can find and share learning material (not compatible with standards). The content is created by teachers, approximately 5000 learning resources.

A repository is needed for several reasons. As the number of resources is growing, the end users need an overview. Repository is needed for centralized search. The standard based repository is also needed for connecting Estonian e-learning space to European network (European Schoolnet - EUN projects like CALIBRATE and MELT).

TLF looked at open source systems with the possibility to connect to the EuN systems. Several platforms support the needs TLF have. They tested the "Minor" system suggested by EUN (minor.sourceforge.net). However, half a year ago it was not possible to mass upload metadata to it. The solution was therefore based on SCAM-Nimble from Sweden (www.skolutveckling.se/wiki/display/SLASK/Home). SCAM-Nimble is LOR management system compatible with standards and federation of LOR’s. Because the development of metadata harvesting was late TLF decided to develop its own LOR Waramu. Waramu is connected to the LRE network of repositories and supports metadata harvesting. The next steps include user management and integration of the LOR with the educational portal (Koolielu.ee) interface.

LeMill is also part of the European Schoolnet's Learning Resource Exchange initiative.

The LeMill website has been developed in the period 2006-2008 as part of the Calibrate project funded by the European IST program. Although Calibrate has ended, LeMill will be further developed in cooperation with Tiger Leap Foundation. At the moment the website is hosted by the Media Lab in Helsinki

Waramu is the first Estonian LOR created by TLU CET (Tallinn University Centre for Educational Technology). The development of the Waramu started within the Calibrate and continued in the MELT EUN project. The development of the LOR will continue in the framework of the renewing the learning portal (Koolielu). It is compatible with the LRE LOM metadata application profile.

Waramu is part of the European Schoolnet Learning Resource Exchange network, connected by an SQI application programming interface. It supports the metadata harvesting based on OAI-MHP. The LOR management system is based on JAVA and is open source. The system and the documentation are available on development site trac.htk.tlu.ee/waramu. The user interface can be viewed on URL ait.opetaja.ee/MetadataPortal/.