Open-Source in Education News

Eduforge was founded in early 2004 as part of the New Zealand Open Source Virtual Learning Environment (NZOSVLE) project (https://eduforge.org/projects/nzvle/). The NZOSVLE is a major collaborative education project funded by the New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission, an arm of the NZ Government. The project’s goals are to adopt and contribute to open source solutions for education. The consortium is composed of polytechnics, universities, and a private training organisations. Part of the vision for Eduforge is to create an environment that is robust enough to support large scale collaborative software development, but friendly enough to be used by non-programmers who want to collaborate on a range of projects. Projects may include learning materials design, application testing, and research as well as contributing documentation, tutorials, and help files to software development projects. In addition to reducing the economic and organisational barriers associated with large scale distributed collaboration, Eduforge is envisioned to reduce the technology usability barrier often confronted by non-ICT professionals. We've recently added Planet Eduforge, a blog aggregator at http://planet.eduforge.org, and integrated a fully featured blogging tool. Eduforge is developed using FOSS - GForge, Serendipity, and PHPWiki. While this started with somewhat of a NZ flavour due to the projects on it, the intent has always been a global shared resource. Recently we shifted the hosting to the US to improve latency for many of the interantional users. We would very much welcome participation - either in using the resources or in helping us develop the reources available on Eduforge. Or simply feedback, we're committed to continuous improvements. regards Richard Wyles

I'd missed this. Tim Bray ( one of the creators of XML ) notes the importance of this open standard for office application documents. He includes, of course, a link to the OpenDocument announcement from OASIS.

ASIDES: Note that this is about an open standard for the document format, as opposed to open-source software applications to process the format, such as Open Office (the two are, of course, very closely related :o) Also note that this is, sadly, not a revival of the wonders of OpenDoc as a standard for docucentric user interfaces and software architectures (see the Standards and Architectures Working Group's area of the site - especially its History weblog - for more about the story of OpenDoc).

On Monday there was what seems to me like a major news story: the announcementthat OpenDocument 1.0 has been approved as an OASIS Standard.As I've said before, OpenDocument is almost exactly what we had in mind whenwe built XML, starting back in 1996.

Right now, it is the only XML office document format that is standardized, andit is also the only one that is complete; Microsoft's offering is full ofholes, starting with the absence of PowerPoint.It's also completely 100% free of intellectual-property issues, anyone can useit for anything anytime anywhere without asking anyone first.Let me put it this way: if you occasionally create documents or spreadsheetsor presentations, and if you think that you'd like to own them,independent of your Office software vendor, well, you have exactly one choice:OpenDocument.

If those docs/spreadsheets/presos might be long-lived, or contain high-valuedata that you might want to re-use later, and you don't use OpenDocument, wellthere's a word for that but I'm not going to put it up on the front page atongoing.By the way, at the request of our friends in the European Commission, we'vecommitted to getting behind making OpenDocument an ISO Standard, too.

ongoing . OpenDocument! (breaks inserted by Mike)

I'd missed this. Tim Bray ( one of the creators of XML ) notes the importance of this open standard for office application documents. He includes, of course, a link to the OpenDocument announcement from OASIS.

ASIDES: Note that this is about an open standard for the document format, as opposed to open-source software applications to process the format, such as Open Office (the two are, of course, very closely related :o) Also note that this is, sadly, not a revival of the wonders of OpenDoc as a standard for docucentric user interfaces and software architectures (see the Standards and Architectures Working Group's area of the site - especially its History weblog - for more about the story of OpenDoc).

On Monday there was what seems to me like a major news story: the announcementthat OpenDocument 1.0 has been approved as an OASIS Standard.As I’ve said before, OpenDocument is almost exactly what we had in mind whenwe built XML, starting back in 1996.

Right now, it is the only XML office document format that is standardized, andit is also the only one that is complete; Microsoft’s offering is full ofholes, starting with the absence of PowerPoint.It’s also completely 100% free of intellectual-property issues, anyone can useit for anything anytime anywhere without asking anyone first.Let me put it this way: if you occasionally create documents or spreadsheetsor presentations, and if you think that you’d like to own them,independent of your Office software vendor, well, you have exactly one choice:OpenDocument.

If those docs/spreadsheets/presos might be long-lived, or contain high-valuedata that you might want to re-use later, and you don’t use OpenDocument, wellthere’s a word for that but I’m not going to put it up on the front page atongoing.By the way, at the request of our friends in the European Commission, we’vecommitted to getting behind making OpenDocument an ISO Standard, too.

ongoing · OpenDocument! (breaks inserted by Mike)

Michael Feldstein quotes an excerpt from Sakai’s press release (note, the link on e-Literate to the press release is now broken, use the one below) regarding a demonstration of the IMS Tool Interoperability (TI) standard:

The demonstration included four LMS systems including BlackBoard, WebCT, Sakai, and Moodle.  The demonstration included three applications: Concept Tutor, Samigo(Sakai), and QuestionMark.  All LMS/Application combinations worked and were demonstrated at the meeting which validates the interoperability of the IMS TI specification.

The demonstration was the culmination of nine months of significant co-design and engineering between all of the participants.

Now that the interoperability demonstration is complete, the standard is expected to be published Fall 2005.  As long as the standard is finalized in time, we expect that this feature will be present in the Sakai 2.1 release in the Fall 2005.

Sakai Press Release

...and goes on to make a point about standards, services, interoperbility and FOSS:

So tit for tat; now Sakai and Moodle can integrate proprietary pieces like QuestionMark as easily as WebCT and Blackboard can integrate FOSS pieces like Samigo. Note that it doesn’t matter whether your LMS is written in, say, PHP (like Moodle) or Java (like Sakai and WebCT). That’s part of the magic of web services.

In the short term, the P.R. mileage that the proprietary vendors get out of announcing integration with a given specialized tool vendor gets drastically reduced if not eliminated. Anything that complies with TI will run on at least two FOSS platforms as well.

In the long run, this is a first step toward the disintegration of the LMS and the creation of the LMOS. Why can’t every single tool in Moodle, Sakai, Blackboard, or WebCT interoperate this way? Why do I have to pick one package for 90% of my functionality and only be able to make choices about the last 10%?

e-Literate: Now, That's What I'm Talkin' 'bout!

See this entry in the standards and architectures working group resources weblog for news and links about a new organisation promoting "microformats".

I've been meaning to do some serious writing on the subject of why "small and loose" standards are the right path for many developments we would like to see in software for education (my recent draft report on standards and architectures began to develop this theme).

Resources: standards and architectures - Current Entries

Microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patters (e.g. XHTML, blogging).

O'Reilly Radar > Microformats.org launched at Supernova 2005

Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patters (e.g. XHTML, blogging).

microformats | About microformats

I've just noted in my own weblog, c-Learning, that Userland Frontier is now Open Source.

We've moved to Zope, Frontier has moved to open-source. Will we ever meet again? Will anybody care enough to really push at the core of Frontier to make it into a modern framework for object-oriented application/service development? I'll tell you one thing: I've subscribed to Scripting News again :o)

c-Learning - noted: Frontier as Open Source

I am a fan of Dave Winer. I always have been, and I do not care who was in the right in the little skirmish that led to atom, I always will be. It was his imagination, practicality and devotion to simplicity that gave us RSS, web-logging, XML-RPC, remote-posting APIs, etc etc --- all the best service-oriented, distributed, content-free-ing aspects of the web we live in.

The beginning of a new era?

OK, "new era" may be a bit over the top, but Frontier contains an incredible combination of features, thanks in part to a vibrant community of active contributors for over a decade. UserLand will carry on with their "website and weblog publishing tools". Will a new community form around Frontier's general-purpose scripting environment? (It's starting.) Will the old fogey's come back? (Some have!) Will a new generation discover the power of an integrated, customizable development and runtime environment with persistent storage and ubiquitous outlining? Kudos to Dave Winer and UserLand for the decision.

Frontier as Open Source

This means progress for people like ourselves (KnowNet) who may be considering some explorations using the Open Service definitions but who want light weight 'bindings' for web-applications.

As an aside... I tried to find a permalink for this article on the IMS site, but was utterly shocked to discover there is none - just the 'past news' URL en bloc. Now, in my opinion trackback, RSS and other permalink-based mini-standards have done much more for education than any number of big, specifically education standards (which are what the IMS site is about). And the REST-ful web has done more than anything to make the web a useful experience for learners (REST is an architectural theory about the web which boils down to a few simple principles such as always making sure that URLs make sense and that all content can be reached from a sensible URL). I am tempted to surmise that the IMS site's prominent ignorance of these small, loose but very powerful standards is quite telling :o)

The Open Knowledge Initiative Delivers XOSID Specification
(Cambridge, MA) - 2 June 2005, The Open Knowledge Initiative (O.K.I.(tm)) announced today the release of its XOSID representations of the Open Service Interface Definitions (OSIDs). XOSIDs provide a language neutral XML representation of the OSIDs, which until now were only available as Java APIs.

IMS Global Learning Consortium: Past News

See also OSID page at IMS.

NB - I have just discovered a permalink at the MIT OKI site for this news: Open Knowledge Initiative Delivers XOSID Specification - if only the IMS site had the same respect for simple web standards :o).

see Moodle and LAMS announce integration plan :: moodle.org for more Martin Dougiamas' original moodle.org post. This seems to me an example of an open source for education standards issue bearing fruit :o)

Moodle, the world's leading open source Course Management System, and LAMS, the world's leading Learning Design system, today announced plans for integration. This means thousands of existing Moodle sites will be able to easily incorporate the revolutionary "digital lesson planning" approach provided by LAMS. The integration will be freely available by the end of July.

Moodle and LAMS announce integration plan :: ScotFEICT :: Online Learning Centre of Excellence for Scottish Further Education - and beyond

... and more from the ScotFEICT article:

"This is excellent news for Moodle and LAMS users alike," said Martin Dougiamas, leader of Moodle. "Moodle and LAMS make a great complementary package. Moodle users will be drawn towards the fun and powerful design tools that LAMS provides, and LAMS users will be able to take advantage of Moodle's popular capabilities for managing communities of learners within a dynamic web site."

"We're delighted to announce this integration between Moodle and LAMS," said Professor James Dalziel, leader of LAMS. "It demonstrates the powerful benefits of combining a Course Management System like Moodle with a Learning Design system like LAMS to create a new generation of e-learning technology. The combination of flexible course pages (Moodle) with structured activity sequences (LAMS) can significantly enhance student learning," he said.

The New Zealand Ministry of Education is sponsoring the integration. "We've had strong interest in both Moodle and LAMS in New Zealand, and particularly in bringing the two systems together," said Elizabeth Eppel, Deputy Secretary. "We see great benefits to New Zealand education arising from an integrated Moodle/LAMS approach, so we were keen to support this development," she said.

The Moodle/LAMS integration will achieve "Single-Sign-On" between the systems, meaning only one name and password is needed for each user across the two systems. Teachers will also benefit from easy ways to add LAMS activity sequences to Moodle course pages. In addition, a new "course format" will be developed for Moodle centred on LAMS activities. Looking beyond the current project, Moodle and LAMS plan to explore advanced tool integration. For details, see lamsfoundation.org/integration/moodle

"While LAMS can integrate with a range of popular e-learning systems, we've been very pleased with the enthusiasm and pro-active approach of Martin Dougiamas on behalf of Moodle," said Dalziel.

"This integration will benefit not only school teachers and university lecturers, but also the growing number of vocational and corporate trainers using Moodle and LAMS," Dougiamas said.

From the UNFOLD team:

At the recent UNFOLD CoP meeting in Barcelona the workshop by Gilbert
Paquetteand Michel Leonard of the MOT+ Editor created a great deal of
interest. It enableslearning designers to use a graphical interface to
define Units of Learning compliant with Level A IMS LD.

Those of you who missed the meeting can now download a
fully functioning version of MOT+ from the UNFOLD site, together with user
documentation. MOT+ is available in French and English at:
https://www.unfoldproject.net:8082/UNFOLD/general_resources_folder/tools/mot