CALIBRATE and CAS/CDGS resources
Vladimir Batagelj, Iztok Kavkler, Matija Lokar
Faculty of mathematics and physicsUniversity of Ljubljana, Slovenia
CALIBRATE
• ICT in educational process is not as spread as we could expect to be
• Several reasons– plenty of the resources available on WWW– Problems to find appropriate learning resources
• 6th Framework Project CALIBRATE– Support collaborative use and exchange of learning
resources in schools– Main aim: to provide brokerage system among
national repositorities of edu. materials
SIO
• Slovenian Educational network (SIO)
• Substantional amount of electronic teaching resources (ETR): worksheets based on CAS and CDGS
SIO – CAS resources
Survey
• Within teachers groups– To many /not enough resources
• Slovene language
– Problems with quality– Modifying the resources
• Closed form solutions are not popular• To adapt the ETR to teacher’s style, age of
students, cultural background ...
– Lack of proper classification
About the project
• 5th FP CELEBRATE– Context ELEarning with BRoAdband TEchnologies– Demonstrated: Not enough resources, not enough
areas covered
• CALIBRATE– Calibrating eLearning in schools– 8 ministries of education
• Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia
– October 2005 – March 2008
Main goals – work packages
• Classification of teaching resources
• Learning resources exchange (LRE)
• leMill: toolbox for adapting and producing teaching resources
• Evaluation
• Dissemination
Classification of teaching resources
• Differencies in school programs
• Mostly cover the same set of topics
• Way to search using own curriculum schema
• To find mappings between curricula in several states
• Create taxonomy: set of keyords, with unique mapping to every curriculum
Learning resources exchange (LRE)
• Metadata: description of ETR• LRE – to enable exchange of metadata• Each repository: own set of metadata• Common standard: adapted LOM format • No changes in repositories• Interface for searching and converting its
metadata• Brokerage system, federated search, basic
software support to simplify the connection
LeMill: toolbox for adapting and producing teaching
resources
• To help teachers to adapt the ETR
• To share adapted content
• Web based authoring system
• Cooperative model of work
• Community
• Creative Commons share-alike license
Evaluation and disemination
• Test group of teachers
• 20 schools in four states
• Workshops
• Questionnaires
• Educate the teachers
• To reach the “critical mass”
Finding ETRs
• Substantional amount of math ETR– www.mathcentre.ac.uk, www.e-um.si,
www.mathe-online.at, www.math.com ...– Google: math, teaching, resources
• 6.5 million hits
• Teachers claim– Not enough appropriate resources– How to find a needle in tha hay
• Appropriate resource– Quality control– The “right one
Classification and Metadata
• Why to use Calibrate, not Google– Search for linear function
– HIT #3: We have extended the principle of consensus scoring in a Non-Linear Neural Network manner. This original global scoring function is a combination of the ...gfscore.cnrs-mrs.fr/ -
– Problems with context• Educational repositories
– Metadada augemented with educational resources• Exchange of metadata
– Language neutral keywords (international thesaurus)– Approximate age at which the subject is taught– “curriculum awearness” – curriculum mapping
• Supplying metada– Other projects, MELT
Language issues
• We “solved the search”• What about the content• In part
– LeMill
• Ideal resources– Those who “travel well”– Not text resources
• “Actual” math content• CAS/CDGS worksheets
CAS / CDGS resources
• Surprisingly few• Many content creators are not aware of CAS / CDGS
tools– Descriptions missing on national repositories
• Not equipped with metadata• Problems with properietary formats
– A call to “standard” CAS language
• Open licence tools– GeoGebra, CaR, Maxima
• Exchange ot ETR– CC license – LeMill
Some practical examples