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EdReNe – Current state of educational repositories – national overview

Germany

EdReNe member:
FWU – Institut für Film und Bild in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, a non-profit company, founded and controlled by the German Länder.

German situation

Since 20067, in Germany, all responsibilities for compulsory education are completely in the hands of the 16 states (“Länder”), that Germany consists of. So i.g. no national curricula are available. Some services that have been implemented by the Federal Ministry of Education in collaboration with the 16 Länder ministries in former years, like “Lehrer online” (Teachers online) and “lo-net” (a virtual learning environment) will no more be existing in the near future of will be run by a privat company.

So, concerning educational repositories, there are some services, that are developed and run commonly by the Länder and there are many regional Länder services.

German Repositories

Examples of central repositories

FWU Catalogue
12,000 resources, mostly DVD.
Educational Media Database (Datenbank Bildungsmedien)
40,000 commercial resources from 3 sources (FWU, SODIS - Software documentation and evaluation, Datapool of Media Centres). Mainly DVDs and CD-ROMs from the German-speaking market
http://www.fwu.de/db-bm/
German Eduserver (Deutscher Bildungsserver, DBS)
http://www.eduserver.de/

“Deutscher Bildungsserver” (Eduserver) searching for learning resources.

Founded 1996, is controlled and funded by the Länder. Since 2001 FWU has been co-responsible for the German Eduserver (DBS).
DBS contains about 30,000 educational metadata records, linking to external resources, e.g. on school servers.
The metadata is stored conforming to Dublin Core.
Links can be suggested in a procedure very similar to the Danish infoguide.dk.

SODIS Online Content Pool

SODIS Online Content Pool

In Autumn 2008, a test portal has been opened by FWU, including different sources of online content with different IPR.Current parts are:

“MELT” (FWU contribution to then European Melt project), including more than 2.200 learning objects and assets, provided under a Creative Commons Licence;
“Lehrer Online”, consisting of about 1.500 non-commercial lessons plans;
“Contake”, an Austrian collection, containing about 3.500 learning objects;
“Elixier”

Examples of regional repositories

Hessischer Bildungsserver (Education Server of Hessen)
(.> F.S. to ask Hans Rauch for details, with focus on “learning archives”)
“SESAM” (Baden-Württemberg, also implemented in Austria (Tyrol)
Access restricted to registered users (teachers in Baden-Württemberg)
(.> F.S. to ask Peter Jaklin for details)
http://www.lmz-bw.de/medien/sesam.html
“EDMOND” (Northrhine-Westphalia, also implemented in some other German states)
Access restricted to registered users (teachers in North Rhine-Westphalia)
(-> F.S. to ask Joachim Paul for detailed information)
http://www.medienzentrum-rheinland.lvr.de/medienangebote/edmond/index.htm

German Metadata Standards

Heterogenious Standards for generating Educational Metadata in Germany

German Media Centres (EAF group)

traditional providers of educational media for schools, more or less organised hierarchically (on states' level)
nationwide with hundreds of media centers, partners also in Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy and Belgium
focus still on VHS, CD-ROM and DVD
standing metadata working group
metadata profile based on developments in the early 1990th
rich metadata (about 70 elements), provided as plain text
genuine catalogs for (1) subjects and themes, (2) keywords

German Education Servers (Elixier Group)

one "official" education server in every German state together with German Eduserser DBS (overall 16 + 1)
focus on compulsory education, but different individual concepts
some providing learning resources, some using metadata
definition of an XML-based exchange protocol in 2006: Elixier
using: (1) Dublin Core attributes, introduced by DBS in 1997; (2) Austrian LOM profile ISS (Interperable Systems Specification)
current content: more than 30.000 educational resources
current problems: (1) very few mantatory attributes because of the diversity of the contents provided by the partners (2) no consolidated catalogs

CONducation Initiative

established in 2006, aiming for a common (multinational) LOM based protocol for metadata creation and exchange
partners in Austria and Germany (education servers, media centres, publishers)
based on Austrian ISS (Interoperable Systems Specification)
catalogues: (1) using list of subjects based on German EAF; (2) recommending controlled EAF keyword list
exchange protocol under development

Implementation of a LOM profile

In spring 2008, on initiative of FWU representatives of various German networks, a standardization group was initiated, aiming to define a common metadata exchange format for various existing proprietary formats.
The current state of discussion and agreements is, that the result will be a German LOM profile, using vocabularies of LRE profile, provided by EUN.
The first publicly available version is expected in Spring 2009.

National Agency for Online Content

Current initiative is to implement a nationwide network for providing schools with online resources, installing an agency in the centre for co-ordination of the processes and providing features like central metadata referatory, central repository where ever possible and useful, nationwide single sign on.

More information
FWU
http://edrene.org/presentations/Germany-FWU/index.html

Connecting Different German Metadata Communities - Towards a National LOM
http://melt.fwu.de/080108_EdReNe.html