(c) 2008 J.Serra, D. Megías,, R.Macau Learning Standards in SELF Sharing knowledge about free software FKFT 2008 Barcelona, July 16 th 2008 Jordi Serra - David Megías Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Sharing knowledge about free software 2 Outline 1.Introduction 2.Open Standards and Learning Standards 3.Available materials 4.Gap analysis 5.Material creation 6.Summary and conclusions

Sharing knowledge about free software 3 Outline 1.Introduction 2.Open Standards and Learning Standards 3.Available materials 4.Gap analysis 5.Material creation 6.Summary and conclusions

Sharing knowledge about free software 4 Introduction The SELF platform is a knowledge base mainly about Free Software and Open Standards with a great deal of materials (contents). SELF is also a production facility for the creation of new contents. Available free materials have been harvested, classified into categories and rated in quality. The main gaps have been identified and are being filled in by the content creation teams. Open Standards are used to store the contents: digital formats and Learning Content Standards (structure).

Sharing knowledge about free software 5 Introduction Open Standard Formats include a published specification of the document format and hold no limitations on its free use. People and organisations will be able to retrieve their information whenever they would need it in the future. Different software vendors and free software developers can include these formats in their applications and create several competing options for the users, avoiding a vendor lock-in. Examples exists which illustrate the loss of information due to the use of a proprietary format (Word Perfect was discontinued).

Sharing knowledge about free software 6 Outline 1.Introduction 2.Open Standards and Learning Standards 3.Available materials 4.Gap analysis 5.Material creation 6.Summary and conclusions

Sharing knowledge about free software 7 Open Standards and Learning Standards What is a digital format? Computers store and transmit information in encoded form. Any such choice of (numerical) encoding is an arbitrary and not a natural choice. Once data has been encoded in a certain format, it can only be read by software that implements such format exactly. Users who saved their data in one format can be unable to choose another vendor that was not able to implement the same format exactly: vendor lock-in!

Sharing knowledge about free software 8 Open Standards and Learning Standards Solution  choose Open Standard formats: Complete and public documentation Freely available or at a minimum charge Freely implementable Without economical, political and legal limitations No proprietary hooks No “value added” legal or technical additions to any implementation of that standard Open standardisation process Standard maintained by an independent body following rules of open process and participation Reference implementation in Free Software Other projects can test their implementation against this one

Sharing knowledge about free software 9 Open Standards and Learning Standards Open Standards (standards de iure) and semi Standards (standards de facto) for digital formats: Unformatted text: ASCII, ISO 8859, Unicode Formatted text: ODT, DocBook Scientific text: ODF, MathML, Tex/LaTeX Raster images: JPEG, PNG, PNM, GIF, BMP Vector images: SVG, ODG Video: OpenEXR, Theora, RIFF AVI Printed-oriented: PDF, PS Hypertext: HTML, XHTML Presentation: ODP Audio: Vorbis, FLAC, RIFF WAV Others: tar, gzip, XML, 7z

Sharing knowledge about free software 10 Open Standards and Learning Standards SELF is a repository of materials (Learning Objects) stored using Open Standards (or semi Open Standards). These materials should be organised in a complex hierarchical way: LO Course LO Course

Sharing knowledge about free software 11 Open Standards and Learning Standards This hierarchy of Learning Objects can be described using Learning Content Standards: XML-based formats used to define Learning Objects and the related Metadata. Different standards or specifications may be supported by the SELF platform: Learning Object Meta-data Standard (LOM) Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM): collection of standards developed by the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative of the DoD IMS Learning Design (IMS LD): metalanguage which enables the modelling of learning processes, maintained by the IMS Global Learning Consortium

Sharing knowledge about free software 12 Open Standards and Learning Standards Tools to create and edit LOM: eRIB Metatagging Tool, LomPad, Reload. SCORM authoring tools: Reload editor, dokeos, aTutor. SCORM players: Moodle, dokeos, aTutor. IMS LD authoring tools and players: Moodle, LAMS and Reload. SELF is compatible with many existing and future Free Software tools!

Sharing knowledge about free software 13 Outline 1.Introduction 2.Open Standards and Learning Standards 3.Available materials 4.Gap analysis 5.Material creation 6.Summary and conclusions

Sharing knowledge about free software 14 Available materials Available materials have been sought and classified in 11 main categories (and several subcategories): SELF Introduction to Free Software and Open Standards Open Standards Office Tools Communication Tools GNU/Linux Other Operating Systems Educational Software Enterprise Software Multimedia Software Others

Sharing knowledge about free software 15 Available materials 80 high quality materials have been found, classified as follows: Introduction to Free Software and Open Standards: 10 Office Tools: 17 Communication Tools: 6 GNU/Linux: 21 Other Operating Systems: 4 Educational Software: 3 Enterprise Software: 1 Multimedia Software: 18 A selection of these materials have been selected to be included in the first release of the platform (June 2008).

Sharing knowledge about free software 16 Outline 1.Introduction 2.Open Standards and Learning Standards 3.Available materials 4.Gap analysis 5.Material creation 6.Summary and conclusions

Sharing knowledge about free software 17 Gap analysis The main gaps have been detected in the following categories: Basics of Free Software and Open Standards advocacy Educational applications Enterprise applications Specific applications (OpenOffice.org Base, Evolution and GNOME planner) More specific gaps are being detected and filled in by the material creation teams.

Sharing knowledge about free software 18 Outline 1.Introduction 2.Open Standards and Learning Standards 3.Available materials 4.Gap analysis 5.Material creation 6.Summary and conclusions

Sharing knowledge about free software 19 Material creation “Small teams” formed mainly by volunteers participate in the material creation stage. These teams cooperate in order to produce the materials that are requested (gaps). SELF is endorsed with some editing and authoring tools to enter the metadata associated with the (SCORM) structure of the contents. The material creation stage is currently undertaken with the help of some existing Free Software tools (until the SELF authorship tools are fully finished).

Sharing knowledge about free software 20 Material creation The newly created materials will be rated and classified according to their quality using a reputation index. These materials will be available in as many languages as possible due to the cooperation of translation teams. This creation process will make a SELF-sustainable platform.

Sharing knowledge about free software 21 Outline 1.Introduction 2.Open Standards and Learning Standards 3.Available materials 4.Gap analysis 5.Material creation 6.Summary and conclusions

Sharing knowledge about free software 22 Summary and conclusions SELF is a knowledge base containing free contents on Free Software and Open Standards and also a creation facility for new materials. Existing high quality materials have been harvested and will be included in SELF when it is released. Free contents are presented in digital formats conforming to Open Standards. Open Standards guarantee that the contents will always be freely accessible in the future, avoiding vendor lock-in and loss of information.

Sharing knowledge about free software 23 Summary and conclusions Learning Content Standards are used to organise these materials, making SELF compatible with different e-learning platforms and Free Software tools. The main aim is to become the central knowledge base of Free Software and Open Standards: you can help us make it real! Please, join the SELF community!

Sharing knowledge about free software 24 Questions??? Thank you!!! Presentation written using: