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[school-discuss] [IIEP] Standards and academia
Dear Claude, David, Robert et. all,
Thank you all for your comments. I think discussion on standards:
those made for learning / teaching / training with technology are
very important. Comments below:
Claude Martin wrote 15.10.2005, 0:54:
Do you know what is "IMS-LD"?...
I know what is IMS-Learning Design Specification (http://
www.imsglobal.org/learningdesign/). It is definitely an interesting
idea, although there is not really proof of concept on it. This of
course just means that there is a need of further research.
I know IMS-LD also already from the time of it being called EML
(Educational Modeling Language). I think Fle3 learning environment
(http://fle3.uiah.fi/), developed by my team, is still the only
online learning tool using it in some level.
I am also at the moment conducting research related to IMS-LD. This
research is partly carried out in the European IST-project called
CALIBRATE (Calibrating eLearning in Schools) launched just last week.
See the press release in the end of this mail. I also know very well
the UNFOLD-project, where they are doing very important research
concerning IMS-LD.
David Jones wrote 15.10.2005, 6:58:
I think Teemu raises another related, but separate question around
the nature and process around standards.
Increasingly I am seeing a division within the standards community
between the top-down approach to standards (e.g. SCORM, IMS)
and the bottom up approach.
The development of the World Wide Web itself supports bottom up
approach. The development of the backbone technologies of the Web
(http, html etc.) were all rather grassroots initiatives, than top-
down standardization processes. On the Web the "standards" are still
made in the "online community" that just come up with some consensus
and working code, that is then just taken in use. This approach
requires that the code is always open and extensible. This can be
compared to the free/open source software development.
When it comes to e-learning I am much more interested in the work
carried out in the World Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3.org) than
in the IMS Global Learning Consortium (http://www.imsglobal.org/).
Why? W3.org's mission is to enable people to share knowledge, whereas
IMS mission is to support adoption and use of learning technologies
(of their member institutions). I value knowledge over learning
technologies.
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The social value of the Web is that it enables human communication,
commerce, and opportunities to share knowledge. One of W3C's primary
goals is to make these benefits available to all people, whatever
their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language,
culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability.
(http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission)
The mission of the IMS Global Learning Consortium is to support the
adoption and use of learning technology worldwide. (http://
www.imsglobal.org/)
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Robert Cooksey wrote 16.10.2005, 4:06:
Teemu, you seem to be experiencing the frustrating results of
universities becoming businesses and faculty who behave like
entrepreneurs (guarding "intellectual property"). This seems to be
one model. MIT has gone another route with their OpenCourseware.
No - I have not personally experienced academia becoming business
unit, but I see it as some kind of global trend. In Finland we still
run our universities mainly with tax payers money and there are no
fees for students. All university lectures and libraries are open for
all citizens - also the scientific libraries.
I do not have anything against business per se. I am just worried
that the models used in business to measure success do not fit for
academia and will only result as bad research and bad education. The
results of academia are not measurable quarterly, not even annually.
Some results are even such that you can see their value only after
hundreds of years. This does not mean that one should not measure
universities' performance. We just must come up with better
measurements.
MIT's OpenCourseware (http://ocw.mit.edu/) is a good example of an
institution where people understand that the "content" is not the
property on what they are relying on their teaching. The real value
they can offer for their students is the MIT community. The content
just communicates how great their community is.
What I would like to see in a near future is more OpenCourseware kind
of initiatives coming up around the world showing how great academic
or knowledge communities there are in Africa, Arab states, India,
China, South America, Europe etc.
Best regards,
- Teemu
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#########################
CALIBRATE project fosters eLearning in an Enlarged Europe
European Schoolnet (EUN) launched the CALIBRATE project in Tallinn on
10-11
October 2005. CALIBRATE stands for Calibrating eLearning in Schools
and is a
30-month project to support collaborative use and exchange of learning
resources in schools.
CALIBRATE is part of a new group of IST projects supported by the
European
Commission's 6th Framework Programme to help strengthen the
integration of
the ICT research effort in an enlarged Europe. The large-scale project
gathers 17 partners, including six Ministries of Education and five
other
partners from new member states.
Speaking at the project's kick-off meeting in Tallinn, Ulf Lundin, EUN's
Director said, "CALIBRATE is a very important step in helping Ministries
across Europe to work together and learn from each other in order to
realise
the vision of a Learning Resource Exchange that can be accessed by all
schools across the Europe".
CALIBRATE builds on the results of three successful IST projects
under the
European Commission's 5th Framework Programme (CELEBRATE, ITCOLE and
VALNET). The project will allow teachers to carry out searches across a
federation of learning repositories supported by six Ministries of
Education
(Austria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Slovenia).
It will also develop and implement an open source collaborative
'learning
toolbox' for schools and carry out research into new ways to improve the
semantic interoperability of learning resource descriptions. In short,
CALIBRATE is a multi-level project that will add value to the services
provided by national educational content portals and improve the
ability of
schools to easily locate, access and use a wider and more diverse
collection
of learning resources at a European level.
"CALIBRATE will certainly support the co-operation and strengthen the
integration of ICT research in an enlarged Europe and act as a
catalyst for
the use and development of learning resource repositories in new member
states," said Zdenek Svoboda from the House of International Services
of the
Ministry of Education Youth and Sports in the Czech Republic who is
responsible for dissemination and promotion of CALIBRATE.
CALIBRATE will also link to a number of other EUN projects and
initiatives
that will build a wider framework and lay the foundations for the
implementation of a new European Learning Resource Exchange (LRE).
LRE will
be accessible to all interested Ministries of Education participating
in the
EUN and other public and private sector owners of educational content
repositories.
More Information:
CALIBRATE Coordination Manager:
Mariano Sanz: mariano.sanz@xxxxxxx
A web site providing initial information on the CALIBRATE project
will be
available by the end of October at http://calibrate.eun.org.
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Teemu Leinonen
http://www.uiah.fi/~tleinone/
+358 50 351 6796
Media Lab
http://mlab.uiah.fi
University of Art and Design Helsinki
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