Edublogs - services based on open source software

VIA - Edufilter
I have been following the famous James Farmer blog for a couple of years now as well as the progress of his highly successful Edublogs. I thought this would be the perfect highlight session to get back into the swing of things here on Edufilter.

From the Edublogs site:

“Free blogs for teachers, trainers, lecturers, librarians, and other edu professionals”

I caught up with James to ask him a few questions:

What prompted you to set up Edublogs and subsequently the rest of the blogs in the incsub.org suite?

Um, playing No, more seriously, pretty much the first idea I had after getting a blog was “So how do I sort these out for students”. Actually I lie, that was a thought I had even before I started blogging - I recall a pretty horrific attempt to set up Manila in 2002. Edublogs just seemed like a natural progression - I grabbed the domain sometime in early 05 I think, pretty surprised to see it was available… played around with a few possible uses of it - Drupal etc. and then, over a few glasses of wine, had as close to a eureka moment as I can ever claim to have had…. that this new multi user blogging thing that I was playing with at incsub could be a source for edublogs… not much of a revelation I know but it’s kinda shaped where I am now more than I could have imagined at the time!

The uptake rates seem pretty impressive - has it been meeting your expectations?

Exceeding them at the moment, it’s scary. To be honest I really want to bring all the sites together to one page, brand the themes a bit (a cutesy little button a la ‘I power blogger’) and doing some serious promotion… but until I can get some serious enterprise architecture / scalability and work on it I’m kinda scared to do that. It’ll be fun when I can though. I think I estimated (thinking it’d be wildely optomistic something like 9k blogs in a year - and there were more than double that on edulogs.org alone.)

Across the various services, have you notice any trends occurring; frequency of posting, feature requests - that sort of thing?

I wish I had the time to get more into it, I really do. Overall people are pretty happy with the services but I’m itching to introduce all sorts of cool new stuff.

Do you have any plans to expand the range of services you offer and what can users of Edublogs expect to see in the future?

Yes, absolutely. First up I want to make it a much richer, stronger and more featureful system. Secondly integration with fantastic tools like wikispaces and yacapaca are just great. Thirdly… well, if I get to pull that off it’ll be a nice surprise, so I won’t tell you just yet

What effect do you see DOPA, if it goes through, having on services like Edublogs?

Very little, if at all, I hope.

How do you fund Edublogs?

Chalkface have provided some great support but fundamentally it’s outta my own pocket. The hardware technical costs at the moment are about $10k a year - which hurts - but I’m hopeful that it’ll be worth it down the line - I guess in many ways it has already. I’d rather not think about the cost in terms of my own time and stress levels, it hurts too much

Edublogs is powered by WordPress, are there any other technologies behind the service?

Yep, bbPress runs the forums and is integrated with the user database (I can’t tell you how hard that was!) Wikispaces is, well, wikispaces and Yacapaca is a great assessment tool run by Chalkface. WordPress is about the closest I’ve ever come to software nirvana though, I couldn’t recommend it more.

3 comments September 26th, 2006

Current use of standards and specifications for practical eLearning Part 2

This is the second of two posts on current use of standards and specifications for  practical eLearning.

Practical work with IMS-LD

As we have indicated in Part 1 (posted on September 20th), IMS-LD helps to define the pedagogical processes; that is why we focus on IMS-LD. The pedagogical processes will usually be based on resources. A teacher will usually create a lesson plan (on paper, or mentally), which can be synonimous of a path for the students, using some readings, images (in general, resources), putting some questions, …
When this is clear and settled, the practical work usually takes the inverse order.  First, the resources are individually gathered; and then integrated in the path.
Let us start then with the resources.

General indications for learning resources

1. Documents used in learning resources should open in a Web browser
   • The best format to use is HTML, as
     • it is simple to edit with free tools (such as Mozilla)
     • it will open in freely available browsers
     • it is very compact
   • An alternative is PDF, this is
     • useful if you want your document to be read only
     • easy to open in a web browser
2. Sound
   • Compression in order to have small files is always an issue which is important to consider.
   • While wav/aiff is a standard, it is usually not compressed, and, perhaps, it is recommended to use mp3 (which is a part of an audiovisual standard called MPEG), as it is currently widely used; other formats which open in most browsers could be an alternative.
3. Graphics/Still images
   • Compression in order to have small files is always an issue which is important to consider even more than for sound.
   • The best format to use is JPG / JPEG, as it is both a standard and widely used; according to the quality required, the size of of the image will be big (for highest quality) or small (for lowest quality). Gif is also widely used on the web for graphics, although it is a proprietary format; SVG has been recently proposed by W3C, the Web consortium.
4. Video
   • Compression is even more important for video, in order to have small files.
   • The recommended format is mpeg, which is standard (although there are different mpegs), although Real, QuickTime, Windows Media usually open in most browsers - these are formats, and can use different compressors, which sometimes is difficult to deal with.

In summary resources should be created in the most standard format, which can usually done with free tools; the way to check this flexibility is that resources should open in different Web browsers.

General indications about creating UoLs

Once the resources are around, a UoL can be created, according to the lesson plan envisaged. This requires an IMS-LD editor. As we have indicated, Reload is the reference editor for IMS-LD. Let us mention that there are other editors, which are special for IMS-LD such as ASK-LDT; or modified to use LD (MOT+, and current work for the well known Moodle …). Some of the editors that are appearing are more user friendly than others (for instance, ASK-LDT is a graphical one, although it does not cover the whole specification, as Reload does). As we indicated in our previous post, current Pompeu Fabra University work about to be released includes an easy to use IMS-LD editor based on templates, Edubat. Let us mention the related work Collage.
Other aspects to be considered are:

1. Packaging of files
• Units of Learning developed using IMS-LD have to be distributed using IMS Content Packaging, which is a zip file with a manifest describing the contents.
2. Tests and assessments
• If you want to include a test or assessment in your Unit of Learning to be run by the computer, it is convenient to use QTI, which is the corresponding IMS specification; the alternative being tests or assessments that open on browsers.
3. Services such as e-mail, chat, forums … are part of the IMS-LD environments
• They are very useful for the pedagogical path in e-Learning.
• You can include some of them using the IMS-LD editor.
4. Metadata is ‘data which describes other data’
• There are standards for general document metadata, , such as the author, the subject …, the main one being Dublin Core or eLearning specific: IMS Learning Object Metadata.
• Availability of metadata can be very useful in locating resources, but it can also be time consuming for users to provide the necessary information to describe the learning resources.
• One can (and should) add basic metadata about the UoL created, by means of the editor; the metadata is kept inside the IMS-LD xml document itself (the manifest)
• It is also a good idea to use Dublin Core in the HTML of theresources (there is a metadata tag, which, again, remains hidden when browsing)
• One could optionally add more metadata using LOM, either in the IMS-LD manifest, or in the Content Package.

Running eLearning

This is not very user-friendly now.
Before a UoL run, one has to assign the users the different roles that might have been defined in the UoL (and to this UoL, of course). Currently, there is a DOS command line tool (CLICC) provided by OUNL. Pompeu Fabra University is close to release a friendlier tool.
The e-learning running needs a Web server with the addition of CopperCore, an alternative being SLED (which includes CopperCore); where of course the UoLs should be stored and managed - as the tracking of the run. Again, Pompeu Fabra University is working on a tool for this management.
The OpenDock project is establishing a repository of UoLs which can be run easily.

Add comment September 25th, 2006

Current use of standards and specifications for practical eLearning Part 1

This is the first of two posts on current use of standards and specifications for  practical eLearning.

Introduction

Our previous post Building user friendly software for interoperability specifications was taking the point of view of addressing developers of interoperable eLearning software.
In this post we address a teacher’s perspective: what if a teacher wants to use some interoperable tools and create some interoperable learning?
We provide a short and basic introduction to eLearning standards and specifications; and we indicate basic things on creating or reusing resources and their integration into interoperable eLearning, specifically, Learning Design.

What are “standards” and “specifications” for interoperability

A specification for interoperability defines a format which enables different applications to import and export documents (this capability of importing and exporting is interoperability). The best known specification is HTML, which is a format for documents on websites which can be opened in any browser, in any computer. HTML was developed by Tim Berners-Lee, and it has been used by nearly everyone who wants to exchange documents on the Web; this makes it a de-facto standard. HTML is also now a standard, because it has been approved by the International Organization for Standardisation, one of the bodies which is authorised by national governments to create official standards. 

Are eLearning interoperability specifications useful?

The Web has shown the advantages of interoperability: when somebody creates a web document s/he knows that everybody will be able to browse it with whatever computer at home, at an internet café, on a mobile phone, … The value is in the document and it is very reusable. The interoperability specifications which the Web is built with are a great help in eLearning, but there is also a need for additional specifications focused on eLearning, which give the same advantages to the users. This will avoid that a change of eLearning software will require the change of the content, which will be very painful for teachers or students.
On the other hand, there are quite a few eLearning aspects which might require specifications. For example, eLearning content providers want to be able to send packages of content which can check that all the materials are present in a directory structure. This is the purpose of IMS Content Packaging. Other specifications are used to define tests, or learning activities. Some of them are discussed below, mainly, Learning Design. 

Who defines eLearning interoperability specifications? 

Anyone can define an eLearning interoperability specification. The difficult part is getting agreement from the eLearning community to adopt the specification. The organisation which has had most success in persuading users to adopt their specifications is IMS, who have developed a series of specifications. These have been adopted by developers and users to varying extents. Some of them are very recent, and this might be a reason for not being yet widely adopted.
Currently, the documents which conform to these specifications are mostly written in XML, which is a somewhat more evolved HTML. These documents are usually hidden from the user, just as the user does not usually see HTML when surfing the Web. Special tools should be provided in order for end users to create/edit eLearning documents (just as a range of applications is available to edit HTML documents).

What is SCORM?

SCORM is the best known application profile in eLearning, and was defined by ADL (and funded by the American Department of Defence). An application profile does not specify a document format, but rather the functionality which an application must have if it is to conform to the profile. In this way content and course developers can be sure that target systems will be able to run their products.
SCORM stands for Sharable Content Object Reference Model. SCORM is a collection of standards and specifications adapted from different sources. Many of the specifications were developed by IMS, for example Simple Sequencing (SS), Question and Test Interoperability (QTI), and Learning Object Metadata (LOM). SCORM was originally intended for use by single learners working without a teacher, but it can of course be used as the basis for other activities too. 

What is “Learning Design”; editing and running Units of Learning

The general concept of learning design refers to the way in which a teacher plans the flow of activities to be carried out by learners in the educational process. IMS has developed a specification called IMS Learning Design (IMS-LD) which provides a formal language modelling these pedagogic processes. It aims to be able to model any pedagogy, and is able to represent the activities to be carried out by the teacher and learners. It does this by setting out how people in roles carrying out activities with resources in an environment composed of learning resources and services.
Using IMS-LD authors can develop Units of Learning (UoL), which should be educational processes meaningful in themselves. A UoL is created (by a teacher) by means of an editor. Reload is the reference editor for IMS-LD. These UoLs are, technically, IMS Content Packages, which means they are zip files containing a directory structure of files, which follow the specification IMS-Content Packaging. The parallel with the HTML documents of the web, is that the documents are created with an editor such as FrontPage, or Mozilla, …
Students can follow UoLs, and teachers can keep track of what students are doing in a UoL: the UoL is said to be running when this happens. The UoL will be run in a player application, in a similar way as we need a browser (such as Explorer, or Firefox) for viewing HTML documents created with an editor. This player application can coordinate the learning activities, ensuring that the right resources and instructions are sent to the right people at the right time, and that their interactions are synchronised (besides keeping track of the interactions). The reference player application of IMS-LD is CopperCore.

Part 2 will be published next week.

1 comment September 20th, 2006

From Stand-alone LMS to Integrated Systems

One topic of this year’s International ILIAS Conference in Göttingen, Germany, will be the integration of the ILIAS LMS into bigger IT structures of universities and companies. The question of running a LMS all alone as a single service or integrating learning management systems into t general IT services like authentication, student’s management or mail service is a top issue at german universities at the moment.
In the first years of practising e-learning at universities, learning management systems were often installed for pilot projects and by teachers and institutes rather than by the computing service centers. This is why learning management systems have got a special status within an university. One reason for this was the teacher’s desire for a certain independency from the sometimes sluggish and over-evaluating IT experts at the computing centers. Most of the first used learning management systems were installed and maintained by faculties and institutes - not by the computing centers. Teachers and professors could test and evaluate those systems and run them quite independently. And because LMS are autonomous systems and usually offer all necessary features like an integrated user administration and authentication service, there was no need to connect them to other IT services provided by the computing centers themselves. This is why you find several LMS within one german university today - even if there is one general maintained LMS for the entire institution. And this is one reason why institutes have changed systems every two to three years without having big migration problems.

Today running a LMS as stand-alone system becomes more and more problematical. For a lot of universities in Germany e-learning is no longer a scientific research or pilot project but a basic service for improving teaching and learning. With the upcoming BA and MA degrees (Bologna process) a general reorganisation of the teaching takes place and e-learning is more and more important to handle the teacher’s higher workload for tutoring and assessment within these new study paths. This produces new requirements to a LMS like importing users from student directories, remote course creation from university management system or exporting user information to the university’s examination office. Another increasing requirement is the integration of a LMS into the university’s web portal.

The change from stand-alone LMS to an integrated system is mainly an organisational problem. Getting data from examination offices or student’s enrolement is a very difficult and highly political process. But even the technical realisation is not that trivial. An integrated LMS needs interfaces for connecting services and exchanging data. For some services standards are already existing - but not for all. And some of these administration systems used at universities are not standard compliant but highly proprietary.

Initialised by Novell a webservice interface has been developed for ILIAS since 2004. This SOAP interface has been extended in the last ILIAS versions and offers now a variety of services like remote user creation in ILIAS, course creation or remote role assignment. This SOAP interface has already been used to import users from the worldwide Novell user e-directory to their ILIAS training courses or for coupling the university administration system StudIP with ILIAS offering single-sign-on and single-look. At the time being the ILIAS open source team is participating in a project for developing a multi-system interface to a system called HIS-LSF used by a lot of german universities for administrating their lectures and life-courses. This interface will allow to connect HIS-LSF to a certain number of different LMS and support the remote creation of a course from HIS-LSF in ILIAS for example. A first version of this interface will be available end of the year.

This loose coupling of different systems will become essential for realising and supporting integrated e-learning services. Only those LMS will survive the next years that offers those interfaces and can be integrated in a broader IT architecture of an university. But we can think even one step beyond. Will there still be learning management systems in five year that can be seen as autonomous running applications? Or will the current systems migrate to something like “learning management services” that can be part of an administration system offering only those features and services that are need for realising e-learning? The advantages of such a concept are evident. Different from today where every LMS is a bit of an all-round software every service would focus on what it is made for - and this perfectly. LMS developers would no longer need to re-implement functionalies that are already existing in other tools (like mail or user administration).

But unfortunately learning management systems would become more or less invisible thus only the functionality is left on the user’s frontend. And the cost of re-designing the current systems would be high. This might not be a problem for Blackboard but maybe for open source tools like Moodle and ILIAS - and also for a lot of commercial systems as well. And therefore such a trend would be dangerous for the variety of LMS products on the market because only big players might have the resources for such a development and a further concentration of vendors would take place.

This process of full-integration is only a vision. But facing other changes in software development of the last decades it is not absurd. If this happens or not, it mainly depends from the user’s requirements for in e-learning. And this means, we all have a certain influence in this process.

1 comment September 15th, 2006

Open source makes ’substantial advance’ in UK education, says report

Open source makes ’substantial advance’ in UK education, says report:

Three quarters of all colleges and universities consider open source for IT procurements

More than three quarters of all UK colleges and universities consider open source options when engaging in IT procurement exercises, says a report published today.

The report, undertaken by the JISC-funded OSS Watch service, also found that use of Moodle, the open source course management system or virtual learning environment (VLE), has grown to 56% in less than three years. With the Open University’s decision to adopt Moodle as its future VLE, open source penetration in this high-profile deployment area marks a substantial advance.

While 77% of colleges and universities report that they regularly explore open source options in procurement exercises, only 25% of institutions, however, report mention of “open source” in their institutional policies, suggesting an important discrepancy between policy and practice in this area.

Institutional engagement with open source software development remains a challenge too, the report suggests. Of those institutions deploying open source software only 14% report knowing whether or not they submit patches (i.e. make contributions) to the ongoing development of that software.

Other findings of the report include:

* 100% of institutions provide Internet Explorer on their Windows desktop PCs, yet 68% now also provide Mozilla Firefox

* there is no clear leader amongst Content Management Systems (CMS) with more than 29 different solutions being used by respondents

* cost continues to be the principal driver in reasons for considering OSS

The report was undertaken as a way of establishing the levels of use of open source software in further and higher education and its place in policy and decision-making processes. With the Government placing the issue of open source software at the heart of public sector IT provision, OSS Watch is building on this profile to advise FE and HE institutions on the importance of incorporating considerations of open source software into their IT strategies. This report therefore provides vital information to the post-16 sector as a whole on its deployment and use.

Randy Metcalfe, Manager of OSS Watch, said, “This survey shows that although open source use is on the rise, institutional engagement with the open source development community remains patchy. OSS Watch will redouble its efforts over the next two years in order to help colleges and universities work through the challenges of engagement, from contribution of code to open source business models.”

For a copy of the report and executive summary, please go to: OSS Watch report

Add comment September 10th, 2006

More on live conference blogging

Time to eat some humble pie (for non native English speaker see Wikipedia entry).
In a post on Friday I doubted the value of live conference blogging. Rod replied on the Bazaar site: “Nice to meet you at ALT-C & I look forward to your reflections - as we discussed at the conference our quick & dirty posts (see Informaticopia on http://www.rodspace.co.uk/blog/blogger.html and HI-Blogs http://www.hi-blogs.info/ may not provide depth of reflection but we (& quite a few users) do feel they have value.”
And of course he is right. The posts on Alt-C are of much use - I was quickly following up his links and downloading worksheets to use next week.
I think the truth is that I am no good at live conference blogging. For one thing my typing is just too poor. For a second I loose track. And it just doesn’t suit the way I write. So it’s horses for courses. Thanks Rod. Keep up the great service.

Technorati Tags: Alt-C2006

8 comments September 10th, 2006

Personal Learning Environments - the Video

At the 2006 Alt-C conference, the Bazaar project organised a workshop on Personal Learning Environments. We are going to write a wiki page which will give access to all the results of the workshop.

Here is a video of Graham Attwells presentation at the workshop

 Personal Learning Environments [7:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (305)

3 comments September 9th, 2006

Thoughts on Alt-C

Back from the the ALT-C conference in Edinburgh. I always go to these events convinced I am going to blog through the conference and never do. In reality I suspect that post-conference reflection may be of more value than ‘news coverage’ as it happens. Lets face it - academic conference have little that requires up to the minute reporting.
I have come away with about ten headings for future posts - so I must have learnt something. Hopefully these will roll out over the next couple of weeks.
My overall impressions? Well this was the year of social software. Presentations about blogging in education were the topic of the conference. Wikis were also popular though less so. Interestingly there was little or no reference to tagging (might that be next years trend?).
About the blogging - as far as I can see there were two main issues. First was whether blogs should form a structured part of the curriculum or be an additional - add-on - space for students - or both. The second issue was whether blogs should be open to the whole world or be used in a closed system - and who should decide?
There was little talk about VLEs - apart from the by now customary slagging off of Blackboard. Indeed there was even public doubting of the future need for VLEs in a services led world. There was plenty of angst about the future role teaching and of institutions. And plenty of what seemed largely ungrounded discussions about the ‘net generation’. More research and less talk would seem to be useful.
I organised a symposium (which we turned into a workshop) on Personal Learning Environments. I enjoyed it greatly and the audience seemed to too. I will post a video of my contribution on this blog tomorrow. And the ever gorgeous Joise Fraser is working on a Flickr stream of the results of the workshop.
It is good to see (at last) the take up of social software. I just worry a little that this is this years fad - and as it proofs hard to get students involved and develop appropriate pedagogy people will move on to the next technology - video?
had a great time night out drinking with the ELGG boy band (photo pending). And met many old and new friends. Thanks to all of you who told me you read the blog regularly - I never new so many people cared. And thanks to all who helped with the workshop especially Ray, Terry, Josie and Lawrie,

Technorati Tags: Alt-C2006, social software

1 comment September 8th, 2006

Sounds of the Bazaar 5

Sleeve Notes

The first of the autumn podacasts from Sounds of the Bazaar. From now on these will be published fortnightly (at least I will try).

In this edition:

Blackboard - what are the deeper issues behind Blackboards patent on VLEs - Graham Attwell’s regular rant. Graham Attwell sees the Balckboard patent as an inevitable result of the provatesation of learning infrastructures and the commodificationof learning. He goes on to call for more support for Open Source developers.
John Steinbeck on patents - in East of Eden, published in 1952, Steinbeck about the “very bad patent habit, a disease many men suffer from”.
What is the Bazaar project all about - an interview with Raymond Elferink

 Blog of the week - Mike Malloch’s use of social bookmarking tools. Mike Malloch publishes a regualr bog, e-learning2.0. He also publishes a ‘link blog‘, providing a dynamically updated listing of his delicio.us tags. And, along with his Knownet colleague, Steve Tuffail, he has developed a number of different for viewing tags.

 Sounds of the Bazaar 5 [27:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (949)
 The introduction to Sounds of the Bazaar (5) [1:53m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (167)
 The Blackboard patent - the inevitable result of privateisation? [9:01m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1055)
 John Steinbeck on patents [1:13m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1126)
 Interview with Ray Elferink [13:26m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (179)
 Blogspot - tools for viewing Delicio.us tags [3:15m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (903)
 Endspot - Graham Attwell\'s wrap up to this edition [0:42m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1080)

Add comment September 4th, 2006