1 Open Discovery Space Overview Argiris Tzikopoulos, Ellinogermaniki Agogi Open Discovery Space [CIP-ICT-PSP ][elearning] A socially-powered and multilingual open learning infrastructure to boost the adoption of e-learning resources

2 Project Identity Open Discovery Space A socially-powered and multilingual open learning infrastructure to boost the adoption of eLearning resources ICT PSP 2011, 5th call, Pilot Type B, Objective: 2.4 eLearning Duration : 1/4/2012 – 31/3/2014 Budget: ~ 15,3 Million Euro 52 Partners from 23 countries The Goal: To facilitate the implementation of the Action 68 of the Digital Agenda for Europe and to effectively modernize education in the EU, for all subjects and skills. ODS aims to unleash the innovation potential of Europe in the production of novel educational and training activities through efficient use of ICT combined with effective stakeholder engagement

Open Discovery Space aims to serve as an accelerator of the sharing, adoption, usage, and re-purposing of the already rich existing educational content base. It will demonstrate ways to involve school communities in innovative teaching and learning practices through the effective use of eLearning resources. It will promote community building between numerous schools of Europe and empower them to use, share and exploit unique resources from a wealth of educational repositories, within meaningful educational activities. It will demonstrate the potential of eLearning resources to meet the educational needs of these communities, supported by European Web portal: a community- oriented social platform where teachers, and parents will be able to discover, acquire, discuss and adapt eLearning resources on their topics of interest. It will assess the impact and document the whole process into a roadmap that will include guidelines for the design and implementation of effective resource-based educational activities that could act as a reference to be adopted by stakeholders in school education. 3 ODS Scope Existing Digital Learning Resources Social Platform Community Building Impact & Roadmap

Digital Resources integrated in the Open Learning Content Infrastructure –18 repositories harvested vs 10 planned – metadata harvested vs planned Community Building –2288 teachers reached vs 1550 planned –240 implementation schools in 21 countries vs 100 implementation schools in 19 countries planned 1 st release of the Open Discovery Space Portal 12 Scenario and Lesson Plan templates ODS Application Profile and Curriculum Based Vocabularies 4 Project Achievements

5 ODS Partners & Roles

Action 68: Member States to mainstream eLearning in national policies –“The benefits of eLearning are enormous” –However, “Today eLearning is not sufficiently present in Member States' education and training policies.” EU’s mandate to support Member States in their efforts to modernize education and training systems by: “enabling and inhibiting” factors, relevant experiences and barriers to adoption of eLearning across Member States 6 Policy Motivation

Just providing educational resources has not worked OPAL : “There are masses of free high quality educational resources available but the critical extent of usage is not yet met!” 7 In Practice

What is happening? Rogers Diffusion of Innovation Model Applied to Teachers’ Adoption of Digital Resources

ODS Proposes: Introducing Innovation in Schools

Collaborative Learning and Community Development

Learning Design Tools

Contextualized Resources Resources Fitting the Need Larger, readier modules –Learning Scenarios –Lesson Plans Proliferation of Resources Modularization of Resources

User Generated Content

14 How ODS Involves Teachers

Large Implementation

Engagement: International Events

118 schools and 600 students got involved in the contest Engagement: Contests for Students and Teachers

An online EU-wide, multilingual, website for primary and secondary education teachers Learning Resource Aggregator: Integrates 22 existing digital learning resource repositories Open Linked Data Infrastructure: Establishes consistent method for access existing resources Authoring and Annotation tools : Facilitates contribution of resources Community Support Tools: Collaborating, Sharing and Exchanging best practices, Training Infrastructure Advanced Content Discovery: Via recommendations based on social data, thematically organized, connected to the curriculum MyDiscoverySpaces: providing the infrastructure to the schools ODSP Support Mechanism

19 Expected Impact

Document guidelines for the introduction of Innovation in Schools Optimize the use, production and re-use of Digital Learning Resources. Develop a network of communities of local, regional, national, international and thematic implementations Set up and roll out a socially-powered multilingual portal for schools in Europe 20 ODS Outcomes

21 Questions?