The OpenDock project: putting in place the infrastructure for sharing learning activities. Raymond Elferink, Dai Griffiths, Edwin Veenendaal Paper presentation, TENCompetence workshop, Sofia, March 31st 2006

OpenDock mission (1) Exchange of documents is basic to education: course books, work sheets, assignments, notes, lesson plans... Move to electronic documents brings opportunities for remote multimedia sharing It also creates barriers –Harder to document and discuss –Harder to exchange –Copyright problems

OpenDock mission (2) Moving to electronic systems can make communication more rigid, complex and formal OpenDock tries to alleviate one aspect of this problem: infrastructure for sharing electronic documents Creative Commons to facilitate publishing and reuse, IMS LD to demonstrate reuse of documents in different contexts

OpenDock (Leonardo project, Oct 2005, 24 months) OpenDock ( The “OpenDocument” repository is being designed to support the sharing of learning activities Here we report the first stage of implementation

The practical problem addressed Many repositories available for large institutions. They are often complex to install, require root access, need powerful machines, industrial strength systems, For many users this creates insuperable barriers –Hardware –Connectivity –Skills –Administrative

Who do we want to support Small institutions, departments, teachers, learners, of people who set up ad hoc Moodle servers. Perhaps set one up just for a course, or a student project Setting up and using the repository should be as simple as publishing a web page But it should also be scalable

Peer to peer Success of peer to peer file sharing networks show that they are –Easy to work with –Scalable –Do not (necessarily) have heavy hardware requirements –User can set up server without permission of a system administrator. So it’s easy for teachers and learners to set up their own nodes, for example in project based learning.

Peer to peer offers a good option, but… You want to have reliable access to files This means either –Deditcated fast servers at the nodes, e.g. LionShare, Planet (too difficult to achieve for small institutions and informal use) OR –Propagating the files over the network (creates large amounts of data on all the nodes) –Concerns about copyright

Support for creative commons: Resolves the association of Peer to Peer with illegal file transfers. All the material on OpenDock is Creative Commons licensed. Protects from prosecution, but also Overcomes users’ reluctance to share just in case they MIGHT be infringing copyright.

System requirements Minimal hardware requirements Easy install, without root access Entirely Open Source system. Extensible architecture. Support for RSS, and well documented API. Web-based interface. Distributed network of smaller peer servers. Support for CC and LD

OpenDocument system Small distributed web-based open source repository system Like Planet and LionShare, default is to propagate metadata, and keep files on one node. BUT can be installed on any server, including plain vanilla remote web hosting. Only requirement is PhP and (for now) MySQL

Storage consists of four levels: 1 Network; 2 Repository; 3 Container; 4 Item Many repositories can only handle items All OpenDocument content stored in the Repository as items in a container, e.g. –Folder with images –HTML page with graphics –a set of related documents –UoL with resources and a manifest file. –Directory structure

Handling zip files Uploaded zips are expanded out to a directory structure Then they can be searched and individual items returned Useful searching inside SCORM, IMS LD… Reconstituted as a zip file for delivery to the user.

Authentication Each repository maintains its own use base. Registered users can post resources to their home repository, and can add metadata and comments to other repositories. Group access to directories Public access is available to the contents, according to the license.

Linking with the wider world The system will output RSS API made available to other developers who would like to interface with the repository, e.g. Reload, SLeD, Moodle, Plone…

IMS-LD support Currently planned IMS-LD suport Leverage storage of the unzipped Content Package as containers with files User has access to the individual resources. Built in LD parser which can –generate a simple preview/overview of the UoL –Make LD properties such as level, prerequesites, objectives, available for searches. Parser is a plugin, so other specifications could be added.

OpenDocument OpenDocument v.1 release will be ready end of July, and trials start in October. It will be published on Source Forge. We only have limited development time, and would be delighted if someone wants to pick it up and run with it.