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Educational Portals: trends and issues Mart Laanpere, head of Centre for Educa3onal Technology, Tallinn University

Educational Portals: trends and issues

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Presentation at the workshop on educational portals at Ramallah, Palestine

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Page 1: Educational Portals: trends and issues

ì  Educational  Portals:  trends  and  issues  Mart  Laanpere,  head  of  Centre  for  Educa3onal  Technology,  Tallinn  University  

Page 2: Educational Portals: trends and issues

Four  dimensions  of  educational  portals  

ì  Community:  teacher  networking,  discussions,  ad-­‐hoc  groups  

ì  Content:  learning  resources,  lesson  plans  

ì  Management:  official  documents,  curriculum,  guidelines,  valida3on,  accountability  

ì  News:  aggrega3ng  school-­‐related  news,  events,  research  results,  job  offers,  course  offerings  for  teachers  

Page 3: Educational Portals: trends and issues

Examples  

ì  Community-­‐oriented:  etwinning.eun.org  

ì  Content-­‐oriented:  KlasCement.net  

ì  Management-­‐oriented:  CurriculumOnline.gov.uk  

ì  News-­‐oriented:  elearningeuropa.info  

Page 4: Educational Portals: trends and issues

Learning  Objects  

ì  The  concept  of  “educa3onal  soJware”  did  not  work  (lockdown)  

ì  Learning  objects:  re-­‐usable  and  searchable  digital  objects  (e.g.  texts,  images,  video  clips)  with  pedagogical  purpose  and  metadata  (3tle,  type,  descrip3on,  language,  target  group,  difficulty…),  separated  from  the  soJware  

metadata  

Learning  Object  Pedagogical  

scenario  

Informa3on  Objects  (assets)  

image  

Course  

video  

Page 5: Educational Portals: trends and issues

Learning  Object  Repositories  

ì  Problems:    ì  teachers  (re)create  millions  of  digital  learning  resources  (DLR)  

every  year,  few  can  be  found  or  accessed  by  other  teachers  ì  As  quan33es  of  DLRs  go  up,  quality  goes  down  ì  Difficult  to  reuse  without  adapta3on  (closed  formats)  

ì  Solu3on:  Learning  Object  Repository  (LOR),  online  database  for  standardised,  annotated  and  evaluated  Learning  Objects  

ì  LOR  is  not  a  learning  environment:  school  library  metaphor  

Page 6: Educational Portals: trends and issues

Decision  points  for  a  new  LOR  project  

ì  Repository  vs  “referratory”  

ì  Media/LO  types,  formats  (e.g.  video,  tests,  SCORM)  

ì  Scope:  only  general/comprehensive  educa3on?  

ì  Localisa3on:  na3onal  vs  global  

ì  Hosted  by  the  MoE,  NGO,  company,  university  

ì  Subject  coverage:  generic  vs  domain-­‐specific    

ì  Contributors,  user  roles  

Page 7: Educational Portals: trends and issues

The  main  issues  to  be  solved  

ì  Metadata  applica9on  profile:  balancing  global  (IEEE  LOM,  EUN  LRE)  and  local  perspec3ves  (school  system,  curriculum  structure,  domain  categories)  

ì  Integra9on  and  interoperability  with  other  systems  (e.g.  Moodle  or  repository  federa3ons):  standards,  specifica3ons,  interfaces  (SQI,  SPI),  protocols  (OAI/PMH)  

ì  Quality  assurance:  by  users,  by  moderators/reviewers,  built-­‐in  edi3ng/assessment  workflows  

ì  Licensing  of  LOs:  copyright  vs  copyleJ,  Crea3ve  Commons  

Page 8: Educational Portals: trends and issues

The  story  of  Estonian  LOR  

ì  1997:  a  private  ini3a3ve  Miksike  (miksike.ee),  e-­‐worksheets  

ì  1999:  Tallinn  Pedagogical  University  builds  the  portal  Teachers’  Netgate  for  Tiger  Leap  Founda3on  (community-­‐oriented,  CF)  

ì  2001:  News-­‐oriented  TLF  portal  koolielu.ee,  commercial  CMS    

ì  2008:  Helsinki  UAD  MediaLab  and  Tallinn  University  (TLU)  team  develop  LeMill.net  (within  FP6  project  Calibrate)  

ì  2009:  the  new  version  Koolielu  2.0  is  developed  by  TLU  team  

Page 9: Educational Portals: trends and issues

Koolielu  2.0:  concept  

ì  Balance  between  three  main  dimensions:  community,  content,  news  (management  was  not  considered  priority  ini3ally)  

ì  Web  2.0  principles:  users  as  content  creators,  friends,  ac3vity  stream,  tags,  RSS,  dashboard  (iGoogle  style),  widgets,  embedding,    recommenders  

ì  Tight  integra3on  with  LOR  (Waramu)  and  federa3on  with  LRE  

ì  Par3cipatory  design,  accompanied  by  research  (design  sessions  to  validate  scenarios,  paper/early/full  prototypes)  

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Koolielu  2.0:  services  

ì  News  –  aggregated  from  various  online  sources  

ì  Adver9sements  –  course  offerings  and  job  search  

ì  Tools  –  recommended  online  tools  or  downloadable  soJware  

ì  Resources  –  repository  of  learning  objects  

ì  Discussions  –  tradi3onal  online  forum  

ì  Communi9es  –  every  user  can  ini3ate  an  ad-­‐hoc  community  which  will  get  automa3cally  a  dedicated  collabora3on  space,  forum  and  other  collabora3on  tools  

Page 11: Educational Portals: trends and issues

Koolielu  2.0:  technical  platform  

ì  Adapta3on  of  Elgg:  an  open  source  (PHP/MySQL)  social  media  plajorm,  see  elgg.org  

ì  Learning  Object  Repository  Waramu  was  made  by  TLU  for  an  earlier  project  (MELT),  now  it  was  integrated  with  Elgg  

ì  Waramu  is  Java-­‐based  middleware  applica3on,  no  user  interface,  Service-­‐Oriented  Architecture  

ì  Simple  Query  Interface,  Simple  Publishing  Interface,  OAI/PMH  target  for  metadata  harves3ng  by  EUN  LRE  

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Koolielu  2.0:    management  

ì  One  full-­‐3me  chief  editor,  two  part-­‐3me  editors/journalists  

ì  17  subject  moderators  (1-­‐2  for  each  main  subject  area):  experienced  teachers,  working  on-­‐distance  

ì  Training  for  teachers:  included  in  the  main  course  DigiTiger  

ì  Ac3vi3es:  Compe33ons,  theme  weeks,  learning  events,  courses  

Page 13: Educational Portals: trends and issues

Koolielu  2.0:    future  plans  

ì  Elgg  version  upgrade  (from  1.6  to  1.8)  

ì  Professional  development  porjolio  module  

ì  Self-­‐assessment  tool  DigiSelf  

ì  Integra3on  with  other  systems  (EHIS,  KIS,  EKIS)  

ì  Single  Sign-­‐On  support  (OAuth,  OpenID,  ID-­‐card)  

ì  Embeddable  players  for  specific  content:  SCORM,  QTI  tests,  CommonCartridge