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Is It Time for a Moratorium on Metadata?

Scott Leslie from Ed Tech Post points to this "great article by Dick Bulterman titled "Is it Time for a Metadata Moratorium".

Bulterman says "For nontext data - such as video, images, audio, and so on - direct mining is difficult, but exactly at the point that metadata might be useful, manual creation simply doesn't get done because creating useful metadata descriptions (the proverbial thousands of words) is not in the critical path of content creation."

Haven't read the article (it's queued for printing, but a couple of breakfast time thoughts occur. It is pretty obvious that metadata is not working. I struggle to think up apposite key words for straightforward papers - let alone multiple metadata fields reflecting the complexities of multi faceted learning materials. Furthermore I stick to my contention that most learning materials have always been and will continue to be created by teachers and trainers. They simply do not see metadata creation as a part of their everyday work.

Solutions?

• Simplify the required metadata to say the extended Dublin core. OK - but we said we needed all these fields in the first place - are we now saying they are not necessary?
• Get someone else to do the metadata thing e.g. librarians. Problem here is that to be effective metadata has to reflect the use of the materials - not just the creators intention.
• Deploy agents to fill in parts of the metadata- interesting but I still doubt that software can be that clever.
• Develop distributed metadata - reflecting the use of education materials - this is the most promising answer but still some way off being effective.

My other big worry in who is to use the metadata. Or, putting it slightly differently - who is it for. Up to now most educational metadata is for teachers - to help them find and sequence learning experiences for students. Yet - if we accept the idea that as Scott Wilson asserts - the VLE of the future will be learner oriented - then learners themselves will have a pretty big say in what learning material they access to use. My guess is that in many situations they already do - despite the attempts of many VLEs and LMS systems to 'control' learning.

This implies a completely different take on what sort of metadata might be available or useful.

Bit of techy fun, this. Spent much of the last day messing around recording MP3s. Its a bit of a bodge. But I have some good quality audio voice recordings. Still doesn't do what I want to though. Want to be able to record tow audio tracks simultaneously - both using headphone inputs on my powerbook.I'm coming to the obvious conclusion it can't be done - at least not without buying and lugging around another bit of kit - an audio mixer. Trouble is they seem to be over specified for what I want.

Anyway why am I messing with this.

First I want to try launching an on line podcast magazine for education and training in Europe. There is great work going on at the moment and fine research but it is hard to find out about. And for many non native English speakers talking is much, much easier than writing. Want the two headphone solution for interviewing people.

Secondly, I am intrigued by the idea that a simple audio recording set up could be a great way to help teachers and trainers make compelling multi media e-learning materials.

England's e-university venture ended in failure, but Scotland's is going from strength to strength, says Andy Moore EducationGuardian.co.uk | E-learning | Top scholar, Tuesday October 19, 2004

Should be doing my travel claims but this is more interesting. In a pretty ordinary e-learning journalism piece on the success (blah-blah) of Scotland's e-university, Neil Johnson, a biology teacher at Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen, described as "an advocate of the programme" says: "Scholar suits all learning styles as it enables students to learn from different materials in a self-directed way."

Nothing strange about that quote - could find it in a hundred adverts for e-learning systems and materials. But what does it mean?

Lets look at the learning styles thing first. I do not hold that different people have different set learning styles. I think we all have different learning styles for different subjects, at different times and places, for different purposes in different contexts. heck - my learning style certainly changes after a few cups of strong coffee in the morning. Or - another personal example - I need to learn something very fast about Logical Frameworks for Evaluation - I will definitely use a different learning style than if I had more time to do a considered and proper job. I would call the style I am using quick and dirty.