Israel participation in the European Learning Resources eXchange

יום עיון בנושא שיתוף משאבי הלמידה האירופיים: השתתפות

ישראל

ד"ר אברום רותם

avrum@avrumrotem.com

15 June 2009

Learning Resource Exchange (LRE)

MELT has been designed to provide users of

learning content in schools with access to more

useful types of metadata that will allow them to

find resources that fit their needs, language,

cultures and preferred ways of teaching and

learning.

Activities in IsraelDecember, January - March 09

1. Defining the framework for the project and its content

2. Operative decisions for implementation• Technological – method of collection and uploading

of the contents

• Content materials, language, quantity

3. Conclusion

Defining the framework for the project and its content

• Requirement of 3800 items• European Language• Free public use (CC- Creative Common or

similar)

Operative decisions for implementationa. Technological application – method of collection

and uploading of the contentsPossibilitiesAdvantages, Disadvantages

Use the Tools offered by MELT

• Not a good solution for large quantities of items, as each item is uploaded individually, slow, complicated…

• Doesn’t allow for correction/or subsequent addition of metadata, only change of unit one by one.

Use our tools: Collection of items in a database file and conversion to XML

• Allows for easy corrections and updates to all items• The item collector has control without being dependant on the MELT system • Requires conversion to XML, individually for each item

The technological solution chosen – local development•Collection of items in database file (Excel)

•Conversion of the file to XML files as required by the converter developed specially for the project.

• In retrospect it turns out that this solution was correct and a good alternative for uploading the items:

1.The teacher enters the items in the excel file

2.The completed file is passed through the automatic XML converter developed specially for this project.

3.The converter prevents duplications and more

• This tool can easily be adapted to an online tool, so that the teacher can do this directly on the internet.

Content, language , quantity• it was decided that the items would have an affinity to

Israel education and culture. without items uploaded from the global network

• It was decided that the language would be English, and if there was something of significance also in French

• As the intended items are to be in English, with an affinity to Israel education and culture, and for free use on the net (CC or similar), we found that we were unable to supply 3800 items of this kind

• In the light of this and various other constraints, we uploaded only 2340 items to the Melt Database.

Conclusion

1.There should be immediate action taken to change the legal status (copyrights )of the learning activities / information which were developed by the educational system and outside bodies. This will allow for their free use by the teaching community without limitations of language or country.

2.In order to simultaneously upload several items rather than individual items, it is recommended to adapt the conversion system which was developed for this project to an online system, as up to now the original MELT system is inconvenient and not sufficiently user friendly for this purpose.

3. After an appropriate agreement with the leaders of the European, the system should be published and made accessible to all teachers in Israel. This should also enable the use of Hebrew and Arabic .

Thank u!