Current state of educational repositories
To make it easier for teachers and students to find the best relevant learning resources, authorities and/or companies in many countries have launched web based educational repositories.
According to Wikipedia, A repository is a place where data are stored and maintained. A repository can be
- a place where data are stored
- a place where specifically digital data are stored
- a site where eprints are located
- a place where multiple databases or files are located for distribution over a network,
- a computer location that is directly accessible to the user without having to travel across a network.
- a place where anything is stored for probable reuse
- a place to store digital data
The variaty in educational reposities across Europe reflects this situation. They are all web based. However, some repositories are merely catalogues of learning resources. They only contain descriptions of the learning content.
Some repositories contain both content and a brief description of each title, meaning they have both data (the learning resource itself) and metadata (a description of the resource).
The resources can be any type of content from ‘traditional’ texts books to digital materials, but most countries focus on digital learning resources in order to encourage the teachers’ uptake of modern materials and learning styles.
And it is certainly the case that the approaches taken by the various European countries differ. However, alle countries share the objective of making resources available and visible to the users, and face the same challenges of e.g. reaching many users, managing rights and adopting standards.
This report summarises the current status of educational repositories in Europe, and it extracts the issues that EdReNe members have raised as a basis for discussions and collaboration in the EdReNe networks first years.
