EdReNe – Becta update March 2010 EdReNe strategy meeting March, 2010, Barcelona, Spain Andrew Kitchen Senior Architect – Digital Learning Resources and Tools Becta

Updating you today about…. A brief update on six key pieces of work Becta is undertaking:  Content Ecosystem progress  Persistent Identity and Resolution for Digital Learning Resources  A Metadata profile for Digital Learning Resources (Alex Kidd)  IPR & Copyright for Digital Learning Resources (Alex Kidd)  Content Packaging Application Profile  Interactive Whiteboard Common File Format

Content Ecosystem A quick recap:  Strategy published June  Implementation roadmap published August  Procurement announced November  Contracts to be awarded for 3 out of 4 lots from the procurement, pending contract negotiation.  Project Initiation Document (PID) being written currently, due end March 2010  Pilot starts April 2010 with an expected end March 2011

Persistent Identity and Resolution (1) Becta provided a grant to UKOLN to produce a discussion document for industry. The brief included the following tasks:  What types of organisation need advice and guidance about persistent identity and resolution?  What are the real issues to be tackled?  What are the arguments and views held by the differing parties to solve these issues?  What technological and methodological solutions actually exist?  Which technological or methodological solutions are appropriate for consideration by each of the types of organisation identified?

Persistent Identity and Resolution (2) Who has been providing input for the report?  Andrew Kitchen (Becta, UK)  Paul Walk (UKOLN, UK)  Andy Powell (Eduserve, UK)  Fiona Iglesias (NDRB, UK)  Nick Poole (Collections Trust, UK)  Charles Duncan (Intrallect, UK)  John Rowling (Giunti Labs, Australia)  Lorna Campbell & Phil Barker (CETIS, UK)  Giulia Marangoni (AIE, Italy)  Nick Nicholas & Nigel Ward (Link Affiliates, Australia)  RIDIR team (UK)  Patrick Foster (Pearson Education, UK)  Paulette Schwartz (TES Connent, UK)  Professor Hwang & Dr Cho (KERIS, Korea)

Persistent Identity and Resolution (3) Next steps:  Report is just about to be released to contributors for their approval.  Becta review to be completed.  Final release document.  The document will be circulated to the Content Ecosystem Steering group for discussion and refinement.  Once published, Becta is happy to share it with the Edrene members and hope that it will provoke some collaborative discussion.  Once ‘purdah’ has ended we will look to actively present this and other such documentation Edrene members may find useful.

Metadata profile Working with stakeholders towards a profile that can be used as a standard by public sector and commercial providers, with the draft for discussion including:  5 mandatory resource properties  Index identifier, Title, Description, Publisher, URL Link  5 mandatory pieces of metadata record information:  Date, Identifier, Submitter or creator, Schema, Group Visibility  Results will be fed into the ‘ecosystem’ pilot.  Interested in discussing others metadata and vocabulary experiences here...

IPR & Copyright  The UK intellectual property office is now reviewing the educational copyright exceptions.  Objective of review to finally add whiteboards and the use of Learning Platforms/VLE should now be included...  Many other useful ideas such as format shifting are still not included  We want to allow creativity with commercial content for the next generation of Musicians, Producers and Designers to blossom Looking into possible win win efficiency savings We are exploring standard licences for digital content, happy to discuss any ideas or experiences others have here...

Content Packaging Application Profile (1) Who are we working with and where has progress got us to so far?  Working with Research Machines (RM) as a prime contractor. Some work is being subcontracted to Colin Smythe, IMS’ Chief Specification Strategist.  Working with UK based consultancy firm called Edicts on stakeholder engagement  On schedule – delivered requirements for content packaging profile based on stakeholder engagement  Delivery of technical specification expected at the end of March

Content Packaging Application Profile (2) Based upon IMS Content Packaging, incorporating support for SCORM and SCORM runtime interaction Also being developed to support future alignment with Common Cartridge - inclusion of Basic Learning and Teaching Interoperability and other features. Producing best practice guidelines for learning platforms and content providers to support conformance. Producing a roadmap for future development of features that are not currently available through other specifications – viewing to work with ADL and IMS as this moves forward. If you would like to know more please contact Will Ellis.

Whiteboards (1)  Technical specification provided during mid  Produced an open source code library for assisting with the persistence of Common File Format compliant files.  Produced a viewer application called ‘Board Viewer’ for viewing Common File Format files and testing purposes.  Suppliers have been working towards adoption and implementation of the new format.  We have created a suite of tests for assessing Common File Format compliance.  Initial vendors have worked with us to refine these scripts.  Press release will be made for compliant vendors post purdah.

Whiteboards (2)  Becta is presiding over a new ICT Services Framework for UK schools.  This is form the basis of a new procurement facility for all schools, with ‘Building Schools for the Future’ (BSF) schools committing to use this framework exclusively.  Compliance with Common File Format will form part of this framework.  EUN working group is producing guidance for European procurement, which is set to take the Common File Format work as a key driver.  Also producing best practice implementation guidelines aimed at European ministries emphasising the importance of sharing and reuse of digital learning resources for whiteboards.

Contact… Andrew Kitchen Senior Architect Becta Millburn Hill Road Science Park Coventry CV4 7JJ T+44 (0) F+44 (0) Alex Kidd Project Advisor Becta Millburn Hill Road Science Park Coventry CV4 7JJ T+44 (0) F+44 (0)