Introduction to learning repositories in Europe and elsewhere

No 141942-LLP-1-2008-1-GR-COMENIUS- Metaschool: Towards Teacher Competence
CMP on Metadata and Online Resources

D1.2 “European State-of-Art Report”

Project: No 141942-LLP-1-2008-1-GR-COMENIUS-CMP
Work package: WP 1 Current Needs Analysis
Lead Participant: EA
Authors: Petru Dumitru, Jim Ayre, Roger Blamire, Riina Vuorikari
Document Type: Document
Distribution: Project consortium / Restricted (Project and EC) / Public
Status: Draft / Final / Submitted
Document file: Metaschool_DeliverableTemplate.doc
Version: 1.0
Date: 28 February 2009
Number of pages: 80

No 141942-LLP-1-2008-1-GR-COMENIUS-CMP

0.1 About this document

This METASCHOOL project Deliverable is D1.2 European state of the art report. It
arises from Task1.2.1 of the project: review state of the art in metadata and repositories
for school resources, to include training programs existing that include modules on
relevant subjects, leading to D1.2 European state of the art report. The report presents the
state-of-the-art in Europe concerning learning repositories and metadata tools and
relevant modules in teacher training. Furthermore, it includes a feasibility analysis
concerning the implementation of the project in participating countries in terms of
equipment and other constraints. This concludes with suggestions for the Training
Framework.

0.2 Version

Version Date / Contributor Summary of Changes
1.0 February 2009/ PD Basic structure
1.1 February 2009/RB Enhanced structure
1.2 March 2009/PD Country Overview
1.3 March 2009/RB Implementation prospects
1.4 March 2009/JA Update on country overview and pan-European
repositories
1.5 March 2009/RV Metadata and methodology
1.6 April 2009/RB Introduction and conclusion added
1.7 April 2009/PD Editing and adding partner contributions/comments
1.8 April 2009/PD Integrating final updates and screen captures

European State-of-Art Report 2


0.3. Table of contents

0.1 About this document.............................................................................................. 2
0.2 Version .................................................................................................................... 2
1.1. Scope .................................................................................................................... 8
1.2. Audience............................................................................................................... 8
1.3. Definitions............................................................................................................ 8
1.4. Structure ............................................................................................................... 8
2. An overview of educational digital repositories in Europe ................................... 9
2.1. Current national digital repositories..................................................................... 9
2.1.1. Austria........................................................................................................... 9
2.1.2. Belgium: Flemish community..................................................................... 20
2.1.3. Belgium: French community ...................................................................... 21
2.1.4. Cyprus ......................................................................................................... 23
2.1.5. Denmark...................................................................................................... 23
2.1.6. Estonia......................................................................................................... 28
2.1.7. Finland ........................................................................................................ 32
2.1.8. France.......................................................................................................... 38
2.1.9. Germany...................................................................................................... 43
2.1.10. Greece...................................................................................................... 48
2.1.11. Hungary................................................................................................... 60
2.1.12. Iceland ..................................................................................................... 61
2.1.13. Ireland...................................................................................................... 62
2.1.14. Italy.......................................................................................................... 66
2.1.15. Latvia....................................................................................................... 68
2.1.16. Lithuania.................................................................................................. 69
2.1.17. Luxembourg ............................................................................................ 70
2.1.18. The Netherlands ...................................................................................... 72
2.1.19. Norway .................................................................................................... 76
2.1.20. Poland...................................................................................................... 81
2.1.21. Portugal ................................................................................................... 83
2.1.22. Romania .................................................................................................. 86
2.1.23. Slovenia................................................................................................... 88
2.1.24. Spain........................................................................................................ 89
2.1.25. Sweden.......................................................................................................... 91
2.1.26. Switzerland ................................................................................................... 97
2.1.27. United Kingdom............................................................................................ 98
3. Pan-European Repositories.................................................................................. 103
3.1 Background information .................................................................................. 103


3.2 Repositories...................................................................................................... 103
3.2.1. CELEBRATE ........................................................................................... 103
3.2.2. CALIBRATE ............................................................................................ 104
3.2.3. MELT........................................................................................................ 104
3.2.4. ASPECT.................................................................................................... 105
3.2.5. The Learning Resource Exchange (LRE) ................................................. 105
3.2.6. Xplora ....................................................................................................... 108
3.2.7. myEUROPE.............................................................................................. 109
3.2.8. COSMOS .................................................................................................. 110
3.2.9. Organic Edunet ......................................................................................... 112
3.2.10. Discovery Space.................................................................................... 113
4. Metadata ................................................................................................................ 114
4.1. Background information .................................................................................. 114
4.1.1. Metadata role and purpose ........................................................................ 114
4.2. Metadata in the context of pan-European repositories..................................... 115
4.2.1. Practice examples...................................................................................... 115
4.2.2. International standardisation bodies active in e-learning.......................... 117
5. Implementation prospects for the METASCHOOL project in participating
countries......................................................................................................................... 118
5.1. Introduction and scope ..................................................................................... 118
5.2. Analytical Framework...................................................................................... 120
5.2.1. Systemic.................................................................................................... 120
5.2.2. Institutional ............................................................................................... 121
5.2.3. Pedagogical ............................................................................................... 121
5.2.4. Technological............................................................................................ 121
5.2.5. Economic .................................................................................................. 121
5.2.6. Cultural ..................................................................................................... 121
5.3. Austria .............................................................................................................. 127
5.3.1. System....................................................................................................... 127
5.3.2. School ....................................................................................................... 129
5.3.3. Teaching.................................................................................................... 129
5.3.4. Technology ............................................................................................... 131
5.3.5. Economic .................................................................................................. 133
5.3.6. Cultural ..................................................................................................... 133
5.3.7. Recommendations..................................................................................... 133
5.4. Czech Republic ................................................................................................ 133
5.4.1. System....................................................................................................... 133
5.4.2. School ....................................................................................................... 135
5.4.3. Teaching.................................................................................................... 135


5.4.4. Technology ............................................................................................... 137
5.4.5. Economic .................................................................................................. 139
5.4.6. Cultural ..................................................................................................... 139
5.5. Germany ........................................................................................................... 140
5.5.1. Teaching.................................................................................................... 140
5.5.2. Technology ............................................................................................... 142
5.5.3. Economic .................................................................................................. 143
5.5.3. Cultural ..................................................................................................... 144
5.6. Greece............................................................................................................... 144
5.6.1. System....................................................................................................... 144
5.6.2. School ....................................................................................................... 146
5.6.2. Teaching.................................................................................................... 146
5.6.3. Technology ............................................................................................... 149
5.6.4. Cultural ..................................................................................................... 151
5.7. Sweden ............................................................................................................. 151
5.7.1. System....................................................................................................... 151
5.7.2. School ....................................................................................................... 153
5.7.3. Teaching.................................................................................................... 153
5.7.4. Technology ............................................................................................... 155
5.7.5. Cultural ..................................................................................................... 157
6. Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 157

List of figures

Figure 1: Screen capture"bilding.at"................................................................................. 11
Figure 2: Screen capture "Bildungspool" ......................................................................... 13
Figure 3: Screen capture "e-teaching" .............................................................................. 14
Figure 4: Screen capture "edumoodle" ............................................................................. 15
Figure 5: Screen capture "Virtuellen Schule" ................................................................... 16
Figure 6: Screen capture "Education Highway" ............................................................... 18
Figure 7: Screen capture "LearnMit" ................................................................................ 19
Figure 8: Screen capture "KlasCement" ........................................................................... 21
Figure 9: Screen capture "Enseignement.Be" ................................................................... 22
Figure 10: Screen Capture "Eyliko" ................................................................................. 23
Figure 11: Danish Model .................................................................................................. 24


Figure 12: Screen Capture "Fagenes Infoguide" .............................................................. 25
Figure 13: Screen Capture "Materialeplatformen" ........................................................... 27
Figure 14: Screen Capture "E-museum"........................................................................... 28
Figure 15: Screen capture "Koolielu" ............................................................................... 29
Figure 16: Screen Capture "Edu.fi" .................................................................................. 33
Figure 17: Screen Capture "Vetamix" .............................................................................. 34
Figure 18: Screen Capture "Opettaja.tv" .......................................................................... 35
Figure 19: Screen Capture "Opetushallitus" ..................................................................... 37
Figure 20: Screen Capture "WSOY" ................................................................................ 38
Figure 21: Screen Capture "Éducasources" ...................................................................... 40
Figure 22: Screen Capture "Sialle" ................................................................................... 41
Figure 23: Screen Capture "EDU'bases"........................................................................... 42
Figure 24: Screen Capture "Deutscher Bildungsserver"................................................... 45
Figure 25: Screen Capture "SODIS"................................................................................. 46
Figure 26: Screen Capture "Lehrer Online"...................................................................... 47
Figure 27: Screen Capture "e-yliko.gr" ............................................................................ 49
Figure 28: Screen Capture "www.pi-schools.gr".............................................................. 50
Figure 29: Screen Capture "Greek Schools Network"...................................................... 51
Figure 30: Screen Capture "epaideia.net" ......................................................................... 52
Figure 31: Screen Capture "eclass.sch.gr" ........................................................................ 54
Figure 32: Screen Capture "hellenichistory.gr" ................................................................ 55
Figure 33: Screen Capture "www.greek-language.gr" ..................................................... 56
Figure 34: http://isocrates.gr ............................................................................................. 57
Figure 35: http://odysseus.culture.gr................................................................................. 57
Figure 36: www.medialiteracy-iom.gr.............................................................................. 58
Figure 37: http://www.ekebi.gr......................................................................................... 59
Figure 38: http://www.epyna.gr/....................................................................................... 60
Figure 39: Sulinet.............................................................................................................. 61
Figure 40: Scoilnet............................................................................................................ 63
Figure 41: ImageBank....................................................................................................... 64
Figure 42: Ask About Ireland ........................................................................................... 65
Figure 43: Gold ................................................................................................................. 66
Figure 44: Innova Scuola .................................................................................................. 68
Figure 45: Skolotajs .......................................................................................................... 69
Figure 46: Mokymosi object! metaduomen! saugykla .................................................... 70
Figure 47: MySchool! ....................................................................................................... 71
Figure 48: EDUREP ......................................................................................................... 73
Figure 49: ENTRÉE.......................................................................................................... 74
Figure 50: Teleblik............................................................................................................ 75


Figure 51: Davindi ............................................................................................................ 76
Figure 52: Utdanning.no ................................................................................................... 78
Figure 53: Skolenettet.no .................................................................................................. 79
Figure 54: DigLib ............................................................................................................. 80
Figure 55: Interklasa ......................................................................................................... 81
Figure 56: Young Digital Planet ....................................................................................... 82
Figure 57: Escolavirtual.................................................................................................... 84
Figure 58: Repositório e-Learning.................................................................................... 85
Figure 59: AeL Educational.............................................................................................. 87
Figure 60: ISFTIC............................................................................................................. 90
Figure 61: EDU365........................................................................................................... 91
Figure 62: Länkskafferiet.................................................................................................. 92
Figure 63: Multimediabyrån ............................................................................................. 94
Figure 64: Svenska Museifönstret .................................................................................... 95
Figure 65: Kunskapsnavet................................................................................................. 96
Figure 66: Digital School Library..................................................................................... 98
Figure 67: BECTA............................................................................................................ 99
Figure 68: TDA............................................................................................................... 100
Figure 69: Teacher Resource Exchange ......................................................................... 101
Figure 70: Inclusion ........................................................................................................ 102
Figure 71: LRE for schools............................................................................................. 107
Figure 72: myEUROPE LLE Repository ....................................................................... 110
Figure 73: COSMOS - Users' Distribution ..................................................................... 112



1. Introduction

1.1. Scope
This METASCHOOL project Deliverable is D1.2 European state of the art report. It
arises from Task1.2.1 of the project: review state of the art in metadata and repositories
for school resources, to include training programs existing that include modules on
relevant subjects, leading to D1.2 European state of the art report. The report presents the
state-of-the-art in Europe concerning learning repositories and metadata tools and
relevant modules in teacher training. Furthermore, it includes a feasibility analysis
concerning the implementation of the project in participating countries in terms of
equipment and other constraints. The Deliverable concludes with suggestions for the
Training Framework.

1.2. Audience
This report is addressed to project partners in the first instance but is relevant to a wider
audience of ICT decision-makers in Europe.

1.3. Definitions
Terms are defined when first used throughout.

1.4. Structure
Chapter 1: is the introduction to the study, containing an overview of this document,
providing its Scope, Audience, Structure and References.
Chapter 2: describes existing digital learning resource repositories in Europe. The chapter
is divided into 27 sections describing the repositories in each country.
Chapter 3: provides an overview of seven pan-European repositories.
Chapter 4 examines metadata and discusses them in terms of educational resource
repositories.
Chapter 5 moves on to describe a validation framework and to apply it to assess the
conditions and prospects for the uptake of repositories in schools in the countries taking
part in the METASCHOOL training, i.e. Austria, Czech Republic, Germany and Greece.

Chapter 6 draws some conclusions from this report.



2. An overview of educational digital repositories in Europe

This report is based on the information that is available on the Web as well as on the
information existing in the referential literature. The report team took also into
consideration a review which was published by Maybe you should include a paragraph
here saying that the deliverable draws upon an existing survey of repositories carried out
by the EdReNeThematic Network, whose work is available on the Web at the following
address: http://edrene.org/

The team performed a review on the existing digital repositories in European countries.
The report features basic information such as a description of each repository, its URL
and its basic attributes. The report also defines the national context, the purpose of the
repository as well as which audience it addresses.

2.1. Current national digital repositories

2.1.1. Austria

In Austria, educational content and services are available distributed via a number of
online repositories and online services that are managed by nine regions. The content
stored in the digital repositories is classified based on a set of standards such as IEEE
LOM, SCORM and Dublin Core (including use of the LOM-based application profile
from European Schoolnet) to make the latest repositories in Europe compatible and
enable sharing content at European level.

Bildung.at



Bildung.at (http://www.bildung.at) is a portal whose audience includes teachers, students,
administrators and other educationalists. According to EdReNe1 the portal provides
access to information and services to about 500,000 registered users who can access
online content which is structured according to three main areas: Education, Higher
Education and Adult Education. The portal is available in German and enables users to
search for content which is located on a number of servers in Austria which are
interconnected and share information.

1
!http://edrene.org/results/currentState/austria.html!!


Figure 1: Screen capture"bilding.at"

The portal, which is designed by “bit media” Austria, also lists a set of services grouped
around curriculum-related subjects and levels and allows searches to be filtered according
to multiple criteria . In addition to the more conventional educational content, the portal
provides news services focusing on the latest research outcomes in education and also



oncurrent elearning events. Lately the portal has secured the support of a number of
sponsors such as Sun andOracle, with the aim of supporting and enhancing its content
and services.

Bildungspool

Bildungspool (http://bildungspool.bildung.at) is a gateway that enables users to access
digital content via a federated search facility to the Learning Resource Exchange service
developed by European Schoolnet within two EU co-funded projects, CALIBRATE2 and
MELT3. The gateway provides access to digital content stored on a number of servers in
Europe that are interconnected with the aim of encouraging multilingual content sharing.
On "Bildungspool", teachers and other potential users can download content resulting
from a number of e-content programmes managed by the Ministry for Education, the Arts
and Culture. The programmes are directly focused on responding to the needs and
expectations of Austrian schools.

The digital content is structured according to existing languages of the objects,
curriculum subjects, classroom activity, as well as the source and location of the objects.

2
!http://calibrate.eun.org/!!
3
!http://info.melt"project.eu/!!


Figure 2: Screen capture "Bildungspool"

On the home page, the portal administration states that the Bildungspool provides access
to 62,901 teaching and learning digital resources. According to EdReNe, "Bildungspool"
features "AEIOU", an online encyclopaedia comprising about 15,000 digital entities -
texts, pictures, sounds and videos. The encyclopaedia also harvests approximately 15,000
pictures (assets) from the Institute for Cultural Sciences of the Medieval Age and around
8.000 pictures (assets) in low resolution from the art gallery "Albertina".

eTeaching Austria

eTeaching Austria (http://www.e-teaching-austria.at) has been designed, developed and
maintained to support the notebook classes initiative that is currently enabling about
1,000 teachers and 10,000 pupils/students to use their personal notebook computers in
school for all subjects (Source: EdReNe). The website focuses on developing and


extending a repository especially designed for students and teachers who are exploring a
number of methods and strategies on how to best use a notebook computer for teaching
and learning purposes in classes.

Figure 3: Screen capture "e-teaching"

EDUMOODLE

EDUMOODLE (http://www.edumoodle.at) is a portal that mainly promotes Moodle as a
learning and teaching medium in schools. The portal also provides guidance on how to
integrate open source solutions in schools. According to EdReNe there are more than
2,200 schools that benefit from the services of EDUMOODLE.



Figure 4: Screen capture "edumoodle"

Virtuelle Schule Österreich

Virtuellen Schule Österreich (http://www.virtuelleschule.at/) is the Austrian section of
the European project Virtual School, one of the pioneer projects dedicated to teachers
who were encouraged to integrate ICT into the curriculum since 1997. The Austrian
section continues the European tradition of this long-standing project. The purpose of the
project is to select, recommend and adapt existing digital resources to teaching. The
resources are managed by a group of experienced teachers that is organised in teams
representing all school subjects at all school levels, from primary to upper-secondary
school and even in higher education.



Figure 5: Screen capture "Virtuellen Schule"

Virtuellen Schule Österreich also features project opportunities at national and European
level, by encouraging collaborative work where teachers can integrate tools and services
provided on the portal. The project encourages the production of user-generated content
resulting from classroom-based project, an outcomes that, according to the project
philosophy, may serve as practice examples to inspire fellow teachers to make use of
modern tools and technologies while teaching.

National subject orientated portals

The subject related portals refer to the education ministry‘s guideline Electronic Content
for Austrian Schools: Creation, Distribution and Maintenance from 2003 and to the
eContent initiative of the Ministry of Education.

The Subject Oriented Portal is organised by BM:UKK and Eduhi


! the Subject Oriented Portal (Gegenstandsportal) was established in 1997 and is
financed now by the Ministry of education
! there are 40 subject oriented portals: http://www.schule.at/gegenstand
! they publish and link quality proved content
! one part of the national subject oriented portal is ViS:EU an EXCHANGE Portal
for eContent between Austrian Eductional Platforms and EU Projects; Its purpose
is: to exchange existing materials between regular subjects and projects, to
disseminate results and information in standard/regular subjects; to encourage
networking with other initiatives in eLearning and to use, re-use und enrichment
of existing eContent.

Education Highway

According to the EdReNe Report4 Education Highway (http://www.eduhi.at) is “by far
the biggest educational repository in Austria”. The portal offers a set of complete tools
and services such as: searching content by categories; Intranet service; a set of links
pointing to the latest developments in the field of eLearning; different types of
educational software. All the content is managed and maintained by a group of teachers
and other educationalists. There are more than 80,000 items that are also interconnected
to and shared via the Schule.at, a portal managed in cooperation of the Federal Ministry
of Education, Arts and Culture and the Federal Government of Upper Austria.

4
!http://edrene.org/results/deliverables/EdReNe%20D%202.6%20SoA%20"%20II.pdf!!


Figure 6: Screen capture "Education Highway"

The format of the digital content varies from text-based to visual resources. Most of the
digital content is enhanced with basic pedagogical elements which encourage users to
find quick and appropriate solutions of integrating it into their daily teaching practice.

Lernmit

Lernmit (http://www.edumoodle.at/lernmit/) proposes another model for an online digital
repository which features a large number of best practice examples in the field of e-
learning that may inspire teachers and students to enhance their curriculum in all levels,
from primary to lower and upper secondary schools.



Figure 7: Screen capture "LearnMit"

The repository is organised around specific school subjects and for each proposed content
category there are suggestions on how to handle the online content and which educational
objectives are expected to be accomplished during a lesson. Each unit was proposed and
maintained by a teacher who was willing to share concrete steps on how to deliver such a
lesson in the classroom. It is suggested that teachers will be more motivated to use
content embedded into a pedagogical framework like this because they see the immediate
benefits of enhancing traditional teaching with new approaches using digital resources.

The portal also incorporates a searching tool which, when displaying the searched items,
lists all the related metadata and information such as curriculum, age group, language and
the curriculum category.

Other digital repositories in Austria


Burgenländischer Bildungsserver: http://www.bildungsserver.com
Vorarlberger Bildungsservice: http://www.vobs.at
Tiroler Bildungsservice: http://content.tibs.at/
Padagogische Hochschule Salzburg: http://schule.salzburg.at
Bildung4you: http://www.bildung4you.at
Wiener Bildungsserver: http://www.wiener-bildungsserver.at
Styrian Education Server: http://www.asn-graz.ac.at
Bildungsland: http://www.bildungsland.at

2.1.2. Belgium: Flemish community

KlasCement

KlasCement is part of European Schoolnet’s Learning Resource Exchange (LRE)
federation of repositories. All KlasCement content is collected, described and shared by
users of the educational portal of Flanders in Belgium. It covers virtually all curriculum
subjects and can be freely used by anyone and in some cases resources can also be
adapted and redistributed.



Figure 8: Screen capture "KlasCement"

Each item contains licensing information that provides details on how to use and
acknowledge the source of the resources. Some digital resources are tagged as being
'universal', which means that they can “travel well across all European countries”.

The portal also contains an innovative “points” system. Teachers receive 500 points when
the join and subsequently lose two points every time they click on a resource. Once they
have exhausted their initial allocation of points, they then can only continue to use the
portal if they gain additional credits by sharing resources and links to web sites.

2.1.3. Belgium: French community

Enseignement.be


Enseignement.be (http://www.enseignement.be/) is a complete portal dedicated to school
life in the French Community of Belgium. It does not have a repository format, but it
collects curriculum-based news, features teacher training opportunities and provides
external links to existing repositories with learning objects in other French speaking
countries such as France, Switzerland and Canada. These links are periodically advertised
in relation to school subjects and online and offline events.

Figure 9: Screen capture "Enseignement.Be"

A special section of the portal is dedicated to ICT in education (TICE), which features a
number of online resources that are classified in different categories: open source
software, project opportunities, latest news in the field of elearning, online communities
where teachers can get support and training, as well as a set of digital teaching modules.



2.1.4. Cyprus

Eyliko

In Cyprus there are no dedicated repositories with digital content addressing teachers.
The Ministry of Education manages an educational portal where teachers are encouraged
to share teaching and learning resources in a dedicated area.

Figure 10: Screen Capture "Eyliko"

The portal (http://www.schools.ac.cy/eyliko/mesi/) features lessons plans and other
related materials that are created by a number of teachers and supervised by the
Ministry’s advisors.

2.1.5. Denmark



There are three major repositories in Denmark. According to EdReNe5 the three
repositories are interconnected and complement each other. The content is classified
according to the Dublin Core set of metadata standards. The managing team is composed
of educators and content providers, who add, describe and maintain a large library of
digital resources. Some external collections of digital resources are involved and their
related metadata is automatically transferred to the system.

Figure 11: Danish Model

Source: EdReNe http://edrene.org/results/currentState/denmark.html

5
!http://edrene.org/results/currentState/denmark.html!!


Fagenes Infoguide

Fagenes Infoguide (http://infoguide.emu.dk) is an initiative of the Danish Ministry of
Education. The repository’s primary purpose is to harvest Web links that are
recommended for use in the Danish schools. At the moment there are about 10,000 items.
A team of 45 people enhance and maintain the repository. The reason for collecting and
storing Web links into this repository is to save teachers’ time by organising the links
according to the Danish curriculum.

Figure 12: Screen Capture "Fagenes Infoguide"

Materialeplatformen



Materialeplatformen (http://materialeplatform.emu.dk) is another initiative of the Danish
Ministry of Education. The repository was implemented together with a number of
Danish publishers. The Materialeplatform was launched in April 2006. According to
EdReNe6 there were about 20,000 Danish learning resources and 4,000 media clips in
November 2008.

6
!http://edrene.org/results/currentState/denmark.html!!


Figure 13: Screen Capture "Materialeplatformen"

It is worth mentioning that the repository stores both digital and analogue resources such
as books, chemistry sets, exhibitions and others. The contributors are obliged to
recommend relevant metadata and a description for each item.

E-museum

emuseum.dk (http://emuseum.dk) is a joint initiative of the Danish Ministry of Education
and The Danish Ministry of Culture. The portal was launched in October 2006 and aims
to harvest digital units that focus on a large number of subjects: history, environment,
ethnography, archaeology, languages and literature and others.



Figure 14: Screen Capture "E-museum"

The E-museum repository is interconnected to the “materialeplatform.dk” and this
enables visitors to retrieve all the E-museum items via this portal. In addition to a classic
search interface, the E-museum also enables users to access resources based on a map
that visualises the Danish regions and the related information which is organised
according to this criterion.

More information about the Danish experience in the field of educational digital
resources: http://edrene.org/results/currentState/denmark.html

2.1.6. Estonia

Koolielu


The educational national portal, “Koolielu” (http://www.koolielu.ee/) provides day-to-
day information to schools in Estonia and includes over 5,000 resources created by
teachers.

Figure 15: Screen capture "Koolielu"

Koolielu (meaning‘school life’) is also an electronic meeting place for school staff,
students and parents, and anyone else with an interest in schools. It contains information
about different events in the educational life in Estonia and elsewhere: conferences,
competitions, the possibilities of supplementary education and leisure activities.

The portal is available in both Estonian and Russian since more than 30% of schools in
Estonia use Russian as a main language.



Tiger Leap Foundation (TLF), that manages the Koolielu portal, has been an active
partner of European Schoolnet in a number of projects such as CALIBRATE 7and
MELT8. Both projects were 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.

Work is also currently underway to build a more sophisticated Learning Object
Repository. The EdReNe Report9 states that:

TLF looked at open source systems with the possibility to connect to the EuN
systems. Several platforms support the needs TLF have. They tested the "Minor"
system suggested by EUN (minor.sourceforge.net [http://minor.sourceforge.net]).
However, half a year ago it was not possible to mass upload metadata to it. The
solution was therefore based on SCAM-Nimble from Sweden
(www.skolutveckling.se/wiki/display/SLASK/Home). SCAM-Nimble is LOR
management system compatible with standards and federation of LOR’s. Because
the development of metadata harvesting was late TLF decided to develop its own
LOR Waramu. Waramu is connected to the LRE network of repositories and
supports metadata harvesting. The next steps include user management and
integration of the LOR with the educational portal (Koolielu.ee) interface.

DiPo

DiPo (http://htk.tlu.ee/dipo) eportfolio system is provided as a free service to all teacher
students, in-service teachers and teacher educators nationwide in Estonia. DiPo has been
integrated with social learning object repository LeMill (http://lemill.net), social
bookmarking tool Del.icio.us, photo sharing tool Flickr, and some other social sofware

7
8
!http://info.melt"project.eu/!!
9
!http://edrene.org/results/currentState/estonia.html!!


tools. DiPo is The DiPo software is built as an add-on module for Plone CMS
(http://plone.org). DiPo integrates personal ePortfolios and the community portal at
organizational level. Personal ePortfolios are used for storing individual data, evidences
of person’s competences and EuroPass-styled Curriculum Vitae. The owners of DiPo
portfolio can reflect regularly on personal learning experiences using blog-based Diary
tool and get feedback from the mentor or peers. All knowledge-objects in DiPo are
tagged and can be linked to certain competency in the professional qualification standard.
The institution- and community-based functionalities of DiPo are different retrieval and
aggregation tools for knowledge-objects, persons and networks. Within DiPo system,
teachers can form virtual communities that are based either on institutional hierarchies
(e.g. teachers from one school), job profile, geographical location or even hobbies. DiPo
has been used nationwide in Estonia as a support system for cross-institutional learning in
the context of all three levels of teacher education: pre-service studies in the university
(especially school practice), induction year and continuous professional development of
in-service teachers. DiPo has been systematically implemented in the context of teacher
education, having almost 1000 registered users (about 7% of all teachers in Estonia). The
implementation of DiPo comprises the possibility to provide the ICT support for new
teachers adopting the innovative methods at science classrooms. The tool can be used for
intermediate communication between the teachers’ community, as well as, for reflective
activities of teachers’ and teacher training organizations. Potentially the tool enables
teachers to evaluate their competences related to innovative teaching practices.

Distributed learning environments - with the arrival of Web 2.0, the social software and
services and social media tools have become mainstream technologies in the web
environments and can be effectively used in science teacher communication and in the
reflective and argumentative inquiry practices at schools. CET has been investigating the
applicability and interoperability of social media tools as distributed learning systems in
teacher education in national and cross-cultural international settings and in the inquiry
practices at basic and secondary schools. The distributed learning management systems
can be used as the democratic and user-managed medium for teachers’ collaborative
action to implement inquiry-based innovative methods into science classrooms and
enhancing dialogic teaching and self-reflection practices of teachers and students.

Waramu

Waramu is an open-source repository for learning objects. It is licensed under BSD
license. Waramu is developed using Java, it runs on Glassfish using Mysql database.



It supports IEEE LOM and Dublin Core metadata standards, but these schemas can be
expanded/adapted or alternative metadata schemas can be added. It interacts with other
applications (e.g. Virtual Learning Environments) through SOAP Webservice. The
repository is connected to FIRE federation (European Learning Resource Exchange, see
http://fire.eun.org), which makes it possible to search Learning Objects from Waramu via
Calbrate LRE portal http://calibrate.eun.org. The repository supports OAI-PMH protocol
for metadata harvesting.

In terms of metadata Waramu itself does not have an UI, full-featured client is being
developed. MetadataPortal is a portal where people can put their resources only, manage
metadata, browse content that is in Waramu etc.

More information on Estonian attempts to standardise digital content:
EdReNe Report on Estonia: http://edrene.org/results/currentState/estonia.html
Tiger Leap Foundation (TLF): http://www.tiigrihype.ee/?setlang=eng
Tallinn University of Technology (TLU): http://htk.tlu.ee/htk/in-english/ -
LOR-EST LOs Repository in Estonia: http://edrene.org/presentations/Estonia-TLF-
part2.ppt
Tallinn University, C Ed. Technology:
https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO15/361.pdf
LeMill & Waramu Projects: https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO15/353.ppt

2.1.7. Finland

National Board of Education has made learning resources available to primary and
secondary education based on Finnish curriculum through
http://www.edu.fi/SubPage.asp?path=498,1329
and http://www.edu.fi/oppimateriaalit/peruskoulu/

Yle, the Finnish National Broadcasting company offers a portal with learning resources at
http://oppiminen.yle.fi/ and specific portal for teachers: http://opettajatv.yle.fi/ Resources
can be either independent study material or they are support material to some of the
educational programmes ran on TV.

Peda.net Schoolnet



Peda.net Schoolnet (http://www.peda.net/) is a research and development project
coordinated by University of Jyväskylä, Finland and offers resources for teachers, like
this http://www.peda.net/img/portal/591316/moon.swf

National Finnish Educational Portal: Edu.fi

The National Finnish Educational Portal (http://www.edu.fi/) is a gateway that provides
access to all the existing repositories with digital content in Finland: Vetamix,
Opettaja.tv, Opetushallitus and some others.

Figure 16: Screen Capture "Edu.fi"

Vetamix



Vetamix is the result of a joint initiative of the Finnish National Broadcasting Company
(http://svenska.yle.fi/) and the National Board of Education (http://www.oph.fi/svenska).
The portal is intended to harvest both educational content and tools which are organised
in three main areas: storage, a virtual desktop with related tools, and a social hub for
educators.

Figure 17: Screen Capture "Vetamix"

Opettaja.tv

Opettaja.tv is a service for teachers both on TV and on-line, a joint effort of head teachers
and the Finnish National Board of Education. YLE Teema is broadcasting Opettaja.tv for
a few hours on five days of the week, offering teaching material for class work as well as



to serve teachers' further education and professional development. Most Opettaja.tv TV
programmes are also available online.

Figure 18: Screen Capture "Opettaja.tv"



The website offers a large qualtity of audiovisual teaching material and tools for its use in
class. It also serves as a discussion forum for teachers and as a platform for the exchange
of teaching material.

The repository comprises more than 7,300 digital resources such as media clips and
learning objects published by YLE’s educational broadcasting division in the following
formats: sound clips, video clips, photos, pictures, exercises and recommended websites.
According to the EdReNe Report10 “the resources are indexed based on a Finnish version
of LOM metadata. The search can be made based on a keyword, a subject (or subject
area) and the level of school”.

Opetushallitus

Opetushallitus (http://www.oph.fi/SubPage.asp?path=1,436) features a set of digital units
that are indexed according to the Finnish educational metadata model (FEM) that is based
on Dublin core but also mappable with LOM. The indexing started with the resources of
FNBE but will be broadened to include also materials of other publishers and
organizations. Commercial materials are not included. The indexing is in progress and the
database includes at the moment 3.500 resources. Most of these are either pictures and
photos or online learning materials (from learning objects to wider educational web
sites). The searches can be either simple Google-type searches targeted on all indexing
text or a more refined search on certain fields of the metadata model.

10
!http://edrene.org/results/currentState/finland.html!!


Figure 19: Screen Capture "Opetushallitus"

WSOY, Sanoma Learning and Literature

WSOY, Sanoma Learning and Literature, a private publisher, has launched three
combined repository Web services: 1) Company home pages & web shop
[http://www.wsoy.fi/]; 2). Koulukanava [http://www.koulukanava.fi/] (School channel)
with free material, closely connected to the company’s books. Pupils’ content is open, but
the access to teachers’ content requires a password; 3) OPIT e-learning service
[http://www.opit.fi/] on an annual subscription basis. The e-learning service is provided
through a virtual learning environment (VLE), and includes web2, GSM, GPS, content
(more that 24 mill. LOs, other materials, curriculum based), and services (hosting,
training, call centre).



Figure 20: Screen Capture "WSOY"

2.1.8. France

The French Ministry of Education has been encouraging and promoting the use of new
technologies in schools and related standards since 2003. A number of French institutions
expressed their interest in setting up and maintaining digital repositories: the national
agency of ICTE, universities, professional training institutions and publishers.

The repositories managed by Centre national de documentation pédagogique (CNDP)

Éducasources



Éducasources (http://www.educasources.education.fr/) is a national repository hosting
digital online resources that are selected and described by the SCÉRÉN Network in
France. The resources are compatible with LOM, LOM-FR and Dublin Core Standards.
Éducasources does not work as a search engine, but it manages resources that are selected
and inserted by specialised teams at CNDP and CRDP. The resources are selected
according to the French curriculum with the aim that they can be used in connection for
school subjects.



Figure 21: Screen Capture "Éducasources"

In terms of metadata interoperability, Éducasources makes the resources compatible with
LOM-FR, at national level, and with LOM and Dublin Core at European level. According
to EdReNe Report11 the Éducasources repository harvests around 7,000 online references.

11
!http://edrene.org/results/currentState/france.html!!


Sialle

Sialle (http://www.sialle.education.fr/) is a repository that provides schools with free
access to trusted, open source software that has been evaluated as being suitable for
teachers.

Figure 22: Screen Capture "Sialle"

The software resources are for classroom use and allow students to experience a variety
of learning opportunities such as discovering information, learning to structure it,
evaluation and self-evaluation. The resources combine text, audio and video and require a
certain degree of interaction.

MURENE


MURENE (http://murene.education.fr/) is a federated search engine managed by the
French Ministry of Education. The service is intended to be a gateway to a number of
thematic repositories as well as to a number of websites publishing digital content that
can be used for cross-curricular approaches in schools. The metadata is based on
LOMFR. At present the portal is under construction and will be ready for use in 2009.

EDU'bases

EDU'bases (http://www.educnet.education.fr/secondaire/usages/edubases/) is a collection
of educational materials coming from different sources that are expected to encourage
teachers to integrate practice examples, teaching scenarios, suggestions for lessons and
guidelines into teaching.

Figure 23: Screen Capture "EDU'bases"


According to EdReNe12 there are about 11,000 digital which are described according to
the LOM FR application profile.

Other repositories in France
Lesite.tv: http://www.lesite.tv/
Correlyce: http://www.regionpaca.fr/index.php?id=correlyce
PrimTICE: http://primtice.education.fr/
UNIT: http://www.unit.eu/
AUNEGE: http://www.aunege.org/infos/search_XML?schemaID=LOM
UNISCIEL: http://trouver.unisciel.fr/
UMVF : http://www.umvf.prd.fr/index.php
UOH: http://www.uoh.fr/
UVED: http://www.uved.fr/index.php?id=412
Canal-U: http://www.canal-u.education.fr/
CERIMES: http://www.cerimes.education.fr/
Edumedia: http://www.edumedia-sciences.com/

Presentations
Scérén – CNDP: http://edrene.org/presentations/France-CNDP.ppt
Educasources repository: https://files.itslearning.com/data/826/open/CO19/508.ppt

2.1.9. Germany

According to its federal structure and the educational policy, no national repository
aiming exists with a focus to unify and standardize contents. In education, the Länder

12
!http://edrene.org/results/currentState/france.html!!


(states) are independent from the federal government. Despite of that and despite of any
lack of power, there is still a Federal Ministry of Education including a minster.
In terms of digital resources for schools, the major repositories are as follows: Deutscher
Bildungsserver, SODIS Online Content Pool and Lehrer Online.

Deutscher Bildungsserver

The Deutscher Bildungsserver (http://www.eduserver.de/, German Education Server) is
the main internet guide to education related information on the internet, providing high
quality information on internet resources to all those concerned. As a meta-server it
primarily refers to resources on the German education system, which are mainly provided
by the federal (Bund) and state (Länder) authorities, the European Union, higher
education institutions, schools, state institutes, non-university research or service
institutes, scientific societies, media providers and libraries. The German Education
Server is a joint service by the federal government and the states.



Figure 24: Screen Capture "Deutscher Bildungsserver"

Apart from research options in several data bases, the information pool can be accessed
via two structured types of entry: subject catalogues and target groups. There are about
30,000 entries which are indexed according to Dublin Core.

SODIS Online Content Pool

The SODIS Online Content Pool gathers together digital content, about 66,812 resources,
which come from four major online sources: MELT (FWU contribution to the MELT
Project of European Schoolnet), Lehrer Online, Contake - a collection of learning objects
in Austria - and Elixier.



Figure 25: Screen Capture "SODIS"

Lehrer Online

Lehrer Online is an online platform that offers different services and tools to teachers. In
addition to news, newsletters, open source software recommendations, the portal provides
access to about 1,500 non-commercial lessons plans which come mainly from teachers
that are willing to share them online.



Figure 26: Screen Capture "Lehrer Online"

The portal also maintains a powerful search engine which enables visitors to look for
items that are not necessarily highlighted, but stored in different sections of the portal.

FWU

FWU http://www.fwu.de/ is Germany’s leading producer of media for schools and other
educational organisations. It produces educational video-films, didactic DVDs and
learning software on CD-ROMs as well as internet applications and keeps on stock
approximately 2,200 titles for almost all school subjects and cross-area topics, as well as
fictional movies for children and young people. All productions are accompanied by
handbooks for teachers and educators. Every year about 100 new titles are produced.
FWU is cofounder of the German Education Server and responsible for the content of the


sector “school”. It has also contributed educational content to European Schoolnet’s
Learning Resource Exchange service in the CALIBRATE and MELT projects.

Related information

Connecting Different German Metadata Communities - Towards a National LOM
Available at: http://melt.fwu.de/080108_EdReNe.html

2.1.10. Greece

Official sites

e-yliko.gr

e-yliko (http://www.e-yliko.gr) is the official Educational Portal of the Greek Ministry of
Education. It has been established in 2002 and comprises a network based environment
that supports the educational practice and comprises a meeting point of all members of
the educational community (e.g. students, teachers, parents, administrators and other
educationalists). The portal is available in Greek and enables users to search for proposals
of teaching, educational software, educational material (educational proposals, articles,
texts of pedagogic concern, information about educational software as well as links to
educational sites), related congresses, events, statements and competitions. On "E-yliko"
teachers and other potential users can download content resulting from a number of e-
content programmes managed by the Ministry for Education.



Figure 27: Screen Capture "e-yliko.gr"

www.pi-schools.gr

pi-school (www.pi-schools.gr) is the official Educational Portal of the the Pedagogical
Institute. It is called upon to national demands for an educational reform that will meet
the challenges of the 21st century, as well as those inherited by the historical role of
Greece. It contains all the official lessons and books of the Greek schools.



Figure 28: Screen Capture "www.pi-schools.gr"

Greek Schools Network

The Greek Schools' Network (GSN - www.sch.gr) is the educational intranet of the
Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs (www.ypepth.gr), which interlinks all
schools and provides basic and advanced telematics' services. Thus, it contributes to the
creation of a new generation of educational communities, which takes advantage of the
new Informatics' and Communication Technologies in the educational procedure.
The implementation of the Greek Schools' Network is funded by the Framework
Programme for the Information Society (www.infosoc.gr), in close cooperation between
the Ministry of Education as well as 12 Research Centers and Highest Education
Institutes, specialized in network and Internet technologies.
Educational Exploitation of the Greek Schools Network



The current design and implementation of the Greek Schools Network focuses in
providing useful services to all members of the basic and middle education community,
fulfilling among others the following goals:

* Access to telecommunication and informatics services
* Access to digitized educational material
* Distance learning, e-learning
* Encourage collaboration
* Information and opinion exchange
* Conduct of thematic discussions, seminars, lectures, etc.
* Access to digital library services
* Communication and Cooperation of all educational degrees
* Communication with European educational networks
* Facilitate complimentary educational programs
* Provide education to individuals with special needs or disabilities
* Inform, educate, and entertain

Figure 29: Screen Capture "Greek Schools Network"
Figure xx

European Programs or private initiative



epaideia.net

epaideia.net (http://www.e-paideia.net/) is an educational website that has been specially
designed to serve the current needs of the school communities in Greece making use of
recent developments in education. It seeks to make classroom learning more interesting
and more effective for children, while helping them become more familiar with new
technology and deepen their understanding of Greek culture. It aims to continuously
evolve in order to meet the ever-changing needs and changes within the educational
system.

Figure 30: Screen Capture "epaideia.net"

The e-paideia.net portal is a project of the Lambrakis foundation whose Greek and
European partners include the Greek Ministry of Education, the European Experts
Network for Educational Technology (EENet), the European Distance Education


Network (EDEN) and the pioneering MENON Network of European education & e-
learning research bodies, of which the foundation is a founding member.

The portal offers educational material in the form of: lesson plans; suggestions for using
modern technological tools for inter-school collaboration; communication between
schools-teachers and students; information on issues of interest for prospective university
applicants; and detailed outlines of lifelong-learning opportunities and careers in Greece.
It also provides useful information on how young people and adults can take advantage of
their free time. Moreover, a daily news service keeps the school community (teachers and
parents) very well informed on current educational issues in Greece and the world.

The e-paideia.net metadata comply with IEEE LOM and SCORM standards.

eclass.sch.gr

eclass.sch.gr (http://eclass.sch.gr) is an educational portal whose audience includes
students and basic and middle education teachers. It provides access to educational
content according to the national curriculum. E-class is a service of the Greek Schools
Network (GSN-www.sch.gr) based on asynchronous e-learning. Up till now, it supports
5,407 registered teachers from 2,582 different schools all around Greece. For the school
period of 2008-2009 2,088 registered electronic courses are provided. The portal provides
free access to students.



Figure 31: Screen Capture "eclass.sch.gr"

hellenichistory.gr

hellenichistory.gr (http://www.hellenichistory.gr) is an educational portal which has been
produced to present Hellenic history on the Internet to students and teachers of schools in
Greece and to adapt its content to their educational needs, so that they can derive the
maximum possible gain from historic information.



Figure 32: Screen Capture "hellenichistory.gr"

It has been produced by the Foundation of the Hellenic World (FHW - www.ime.gr) and
can be utilised by the Greek educational system and abroad. Its content has been created
by distinguished historians, researchers, archaeologists and information scientists of
Greece. It deals with all aspects of the Greek activity: politics, military, history, literature,
culture, private life, society, economy etc, from Prehistory to the present day. It is also
accompanied by extensive bibliography, timetables and abundant photographic material.

www.greek-language.gr
The Centre for the Greek Language (www.greek-language.gr) has designed and
implemented this Internet portal to support the study and teaching of the Greek language.
It is addressed to researchers, university students, teachers, pupils, and everyone
interested in the Greek language, within and outside of Greece. It attempts to cover the
Greek language both diachronically and synchronically (Ancient Greek, Medieval Greek,
and Modern Greek). Our aim is for the Portal to constitute a useful, reliable, and effective
environment:

! for the support and dissemination of the Greek language in the digital age,
! for the teaching of Greek as a native and second/foreign language,
! for the support of research,


! for the productive use of Information and Communication Technologies in the
teaching of the Greek language.

Figure 33: Screen Capture "www.greek-language.gr"

Teachers Portals

Other related educational portals in Greece:

http://isocrates.gr



Figure 34: http://isocrates.gr

http://odysseus.culture.gr

Figure 35: http://odysseus.culture.gr



www.medialiteracy-iom.gr

Figure 36: www.medialiteracy-iom.gr

http://www.ekebi.gr



Figure 37: http://www.ekebi.gr
Figure xx

http://www.epyna.gr/



Figure 38: http://www.epyna.gr/

2.1.11. Hungary

Sulinet Digital Knowledge Base

The Sulinet Digital Knowledge Base (SDT) (http://sdt.sulinet.hu) provides Internet
connection and computer labs for schools, teaching materials on the Sulinet Educational
portal and trainings for teachers.



Figure 39: Sulinet

Sulinet Digital Knowledge Base is a digital curriculum database which is managed
through a content management system that allows development of e-learning materials
according to the knowledge areas and subjects specified by the National Core Curriculum
and customization of content for the Hungarian educational system.

2.1.12. Iceland

Skólavefurinn

The Skólavefurinn website (http://www.skolavefurinn.is) was founded by a group of
Icelandic teachers in 1999 with the objective of producing online teaching material and
learning resources for teachers and students equally available throughout the country.


With the support of leading experts, teachers, the Ministry of Education and other non-
profit organizations, as well as private companies, Skólavefurinn has become the leading
provider of online teaching material in the country. Although Skólavefurinn is a paid
subscription site, it offers around 30% of its material as ‘open content’ that is freely
available to everyone. Skólavefurinn produces online educational material in all
categories – web pages, audio books, multimedia and interactive exercises, video, printed
material, books and CD’s.

2.1.13. Ireland

Scoilnet

Scoilnet (http://www.scoilnet.ie/) is the education portal of the Department of Education
and Science (DES) in Ireland. Launched in 1998, the website is managed on behalf of the
DES by the National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE). Scoilnet’s current
interface was launched in March 2003.



Figure 40: Scoilnet

Resources referenced from Scoilnet mainly comprise lesson plans, interactive and
printable worksheets, notes and multimedia content. These are aimed at students,
teachers, school managers and parents. Resources are also curriculum focused and have
been selected and reviewed by curriculum specialists and teachers. Scoilnet actively
promotes the integration of ICT in teaching and learning and as a result has been
involved in developing a number of sites with specific relevance to the Irish curricula.

Sciolnet has also been a partner in the European Schoolnet MELT project and is
providing content to the Learning Resource Exchange service for school. It is also the
first organisation to have implemented a federated search of the LRE from within a
national school portal.

ImageBank



ImageBank (http://www.scoilnet.ie/imagebank) is a photo library website where people
can search for and share photos for educational use. It has been developed by the
National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE) and Scoilnet, the portal for Irish
education ImageBank focuses on providing photos of Irish places and spaces but other
subjects are also included. ImageBank is intended as a supportive resource for students
and teachers in Irish education. NCTE use Creative Commons licensing to allow users to
share their photos and specify how others may use them.

Figure 41: ImageBank

Ask About Ireland

“Ask About Ireland” (http://www.askaboutireland.ie/) is an initiative of An Chomhairle
Leabharlanna, funded by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local



Government through the Information Society Fund and The Heritage Council. The
website is design by the Digital Media Centre, DIT.

Figure 42: Ask About Ireland

According to a statement on the website, “Ask About Ireland” provides an unique access
to new information, rare images and documents from Irish public libraries, museums and
archives. Copyright material loaded onto the website is available for the purposes of
research and private study or criticism or review within the terms of individual licenses
for each page on this site. All users must acknowledge that the contents of this website
will not be extracted or re-utilised for any competing or commercial purpose without the
written consent of An Chomhairle Leabharlanna and the copyright holder.

Further information:
NCTE: http://www.ncte.ie/


Digital Content Creation: http://www.ucd.ie/ivrla/workbook/wrepintroduction.html

2.1.14. Italy

Gold

Gold (http://gold.indire.it/) is an educational repository which is managed by Indire, the
Italian national agency responsible for teachers’ training in the field of new technologies.

Figure 43: Gold

The GOLD team encourages teachers to share experiences and digital material by
offering periodic awards to contributors. The contributors are familiarised with the
metadata and the repository entries are indexed according to LOM.


Innova Scuola

Innova Scuola (http://www.innovascuola.gov.it/) is the public access point to online
platform which is promoted and financed by the Cabinet’s Department for Innovation and
Technology (DIT) with the collaboration of Ministry of Education, Universities and
Research (MIUR). It belongs to a series of initiatives for the promotion and integration of
the use of new technologies in teaching.

The didactic digital content library (Libreria Digitale Aperta, Open Digital Library)
allows teachers to seek the desired digital content among those offered upon payment by
publishers through the marketplace and those freely accessible and re-usable available
both on the platform and other public portals, whether national or not. The library also
harvests text-based entries which can be accessed in eBook format.



Figure 44: Innova Scuola

The portal also maintains a set of tools that help teachers collaboratively create digital
content by combining existing resources available on the marketplace with free material.

2.1.15. Latvia

There are no digital repositories in Latvia, but an attempt has been made to organise some
user-generated digital content within a portal dedicated to teachers.

Skolotajs

Skolotajs (http://www.skolotajs.lv) is a portal managed by Microsoft Latvia and
addresses teachers. The portal has three major areas: teaching materials; books; and
different teaching examples as best practice solutions. Teachers can also find other
related information for teaching purposes, events connected with teacher life, different
competitions and a forum.



Figure 45: Skolotajs

2.1.16. Lithuania

Mokymosi object! metaduomen! saugykla

Mokymosi object! metaduomen! saugykla (in English Central LOM repository for
schools http://lom.emokykla.lt) is the Lithuanian LOM content repository which is part of
national ICT in Education Strategy and Program for 2008-2012. The aim is to create a
content repository consisting of reusable Learning Objects (based on international
standards) and to allow teachers to create, modify and reuse these resources in open
source learning platforms.



Figure 46: Mokymosi object! metaduomen! saugykla

Related information
Centre of Information Technologies of Education: http://www.ipc.lt/english.htm
A presentation of the Lithuanian library: http://edrene.org/presentations/Lithuania-
ITC.ppt

2.1.17. Luxembourg

MySchool!

The MySchool! (http://www.myschool.lu/) portal developed by the Luxembourg Ministry
of Education includes workspaces, documents, reference works, communities, personal
web sites and school intranets. MySchool! allows both students and teachers to access


educational information, anywhere and anytime, through a browser environment, without
having to install any client software on their PCs.

Figure 47: MySchool!



The portal covers three main issues: Information and knowledge distribution;
Communication and collaboration, for both students and teachers; and application
sharing.

According to the portal manager, Daniel Weiler,13 the management team tries to better
optimise searching functions to help user to find what they need easier. The portal in
figures: 122,738 online books, 3,163 LOs, 71,604 multimedia files, 585 communities,
50,733 documents, 11,484 virtual working spaces, 1,086 shared forums. It is estimated
that 20,086 active users benefit from the services and content provided by the portal.

2.1.18. The Netherlands

EDUREP

EDUREP (http://edurep.kennisnet.nl/) is an online service managed by Kennisnet
(http://www.kennisnet.nl/) which is a public ICT support organization in the Netherlands.
Kennisnet aims at national and regional cooperation with schools, branch organizations
and governments to provide tailor-made ICT support within a broad spectrum of
educational target groups in primary, secondary and adult education.

13
!http://www.myschool.lu/home/Downloads/Press/Oct%2002%20Intranet%20Strategist%20"
%20mySchool!.pdf!!


Figure 48: EDUREP

EDUREP connects a number of electronic libraries such as museums or other Dutch
cultural heritage institutions as well as repositories from schools featuring teacher-
developed content. It is essentially a metadata exchange platform connecting repositories
that have an OAI-PMH interface and that provide metadata based on a national LOM-
based application profile.

ENTRÉE

ENTRÉE (http://entree.kennisnet.nl/) is a federated authentication and authorization
services that enables users to access educational portals based on their personal profile.
Certain content can be accessed only by authorised users.



Figure 49: ENTRÉE

Teleblik

Teleblik (http://www.teleblik.nl/) provides schools with access to cultural heritage
resources. The service has evolved partly as a reaction of teachers to the low quality and
the restricted IPR of commercially available resources.



Figure 50: Teleblik

According to EdReNe14, currently Teleblik, contains 15.000 hours of Dutch streaming
media heritage selected for the educational field. The service is behind login but free for
schools because it is paid by the Ministry of Education. Teleblik has won already several
prices and the quality content is a key element that attracts schools.

14
!http://edrene.org/results/currentState/netherlands.html!!


Davindi

Davindi (http://www.davindi.nl/) is a portal that is a joint effort of Kennisnet and the
Dutch Public Libraries. Davindi publishes more than 40,000 objects and is interconnected
with EDUREP.

Figure 51: Davindi

Other repositories in The Netherlands
Digischool: http://www.digischool.nl/
Repositories in the Netherlands: http://edrene.org/presentations/TheNetherlands-
Kennisnet.ppt

2.1.19. Norway


Utdanning.no

Utdanning.no is managed by the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research and is
the national educational gateway providing access to a number of services and tools: a
national repository covering all school subjects; a national repository of learning object
metadata; and a framework for learning content publishing. The repository features about
5,700 objects organised according to school level, school subjects and type of learning.



Figure 52: Utdanning.no

According to EdReNe15 Utdanning.no is completely based on open source software
where the key software used is: Fedora.info repository software, Drupal CMS, FEZ

15
!http://edrene.org/results/currentState/norway.html!!


fedora GUI and more. The Utdanning.no portal is being completely redesigned at the
beginning of 2009.

Skolenettet.no

The Norwegian Schoolnet, Skolenettet.no (http://www.skolenettet.no/) is a service
provided by the Directorate for Primary and Secondary Education in Norway.

The portal benefits from GREP, an initiative, which provides the national curriculum
online as a common, controlled vocabulary. In terms of storage, the GREP initiative
considers the structure of the various subject curriculums very similar and therefore they
can be unified in a common data structure.

Figure 53: Skolenettet.no



GREP also serves in the process of labeling and retrieval of educational resources to
ensure consistency.

DigLib

DigLib (http://www.diglib.no/) is a joint activity of a number of digital content producers
that are committed to providing free access to primary, lower, upper secondary schools
and in higher education.

Figure 54: DigLib

The portal content is indexed by using international standards like SRU/SRW, OAI-
PMH, NORLOM, Dublin Core, SCORM, IMS Content Packaging and others.



2.1.20. Poland

Interklasa

Interklasa (http://www.interklasa.pl) is one of the most popular portals for teachers in
Poland. The portal does not contain a content repositories, but features educational
information on all school subjects including teaching materials, tests, school
competitions, lesson plans, guidelines for new teachers, information for parents and
students.

Figure 55: Interklasa

The purpose of the portal is to support teachers by providing them with ideas and best
practice examples in the field of ICT at school.

Young Digital Planet


Young Digital Planet (http://www.ydp.eu/en/) is a private educational eContent publisher
and eLearning technology provider. The YDP portal, among other things, offers
educational digital content for teachers in schools and colleges, with an important focus
on Science and Maths teaching and digital language learning courses for schools and
home-based learners.

Figure 56: Young Digital Planet

yTeach is a Web service is incorporated into Young Digital Planet and is an initiative
addressing teachers' needs. Based on the YDP Universal Curriculum's resources covering
Science, Maths, Chemistry, Biology and Physics, the portal provides teachers with access
to thousands of high quality digital resources. The resources also give teachers the
opportunity to create their individual presentations and create assignments for students.


According to the statistics published by Young Digital Planet16 the portal provides:
30,000, high-quality, interactive, curriculum mapped resources from Maths and Science;
variety of search tools; home access; an easy-to-use presentation builder; online
assignments and results verification; editing tools; advanced interactive whiteboard
presentation tools and VLE interoperability.

Scholaris

Scholaris http://www.scholaris.pl is a free, publicly available portal created by the Polish
Ministry of Education with Young Digital Planet and contains some educational content
based on YDP’s Universal Curriculum content. Scholaris is also currently the largest
database of teaching aids, multimedia resources for teachers, students and parents. The
repository was partly developed within the European Schoolnet CALIBRATE project and
will be subject to further revisions during 2009.

2.1.21. Portugal

Escolavirtual

Escolavirtual (http://www.escolavirtual.pt/index), in English Virtual School, is managed
by Porto Editora, which is one of the major Portuguese educational publishers. The
publisher produces and updates a number of multimedia products and one of them is the
Portuguese digital encyclopaedia. Porto Editora also maintains the largest collection of
digital resources covering all school subjects in the Portuguese curriculum under
Escolavirtual.

16
!http://www.ydp.eu/en/education/yteach/!!


Figure 57: Escolavirtual

Repositório e-Learning

Repositório e-Learning (http://e-repository.tecminho.uminho.pt/) is a large database of
educational resources that are managed and maintained by the University of Minho.



Figure 58: Repositório e-Learning

The purpose of the repository is to promote digital resources designed in-house and
which can be used by external users free of charge.

Other repositories
Instituto Camões: http://www.instituto-camoes.pt/
Biblioteca Nacional Digital: http://bnd.bn.pt/
DGEMN: http://www.monumentos.pt/Monumentos/forms/000_B.aspx?Idioma=en-GB

Directorate-General for innovation & Curriculum Development /Ministry of Education

The web site of the Directorate-General for innovation & Curriculum Development of the
Ministry of Education currently has a basic central repository of resources
http://sitio.dgidc.min-edu.pt/Recursos/Paginas/default2.aspx.


With support from European Schoolnet, and as a result of the Ministry’s participation in
the ASPECT project, a more fully featured repository (using international standards) is
being developed in 2009.

2.1.22. Romania

AeL Educational

AeL Educational (http://advancedelearning.com) is a portal in Romania which is
managed by SIVECO. AeL is a national program for introducing IT into pre-university
education and provides schools with both equipment and econtent which is stored on a
local school server. The aim is that the quality of the learning process will increase as a
result of teachers and students using intuitive and interactive didactic materials.



Figure 59: AeL Educational

The portal harvests all learning objects and is enriched and updated regularly. Teachers,
parents and students all have access to the portal which includes 1,700 AeL multimedia
lessons, dictionaries and encyclopaedia, interactive materials, tutorials, exercises,
simulations and educational games.



According to SIVECO17 over seven million people benefit directly or indirectly from the
services they provide including: 3 million pupils; over 11,000 teachers and instructors;
4,800 IT laboratories.

2.1.23. Slovenia

The Academic and Research Network of Slovenia (Arnes, http://www.arnes.si) is a
public institute which provides network services for research, educational and cultural
organizations and enables them to connect and cooperate with each other and with related
organizations abroad.

In 1994, the Slovenian government started a six-year project (RO) aiming to contribute
toward problem oriented, more efficient and friendlier schools18. The following factors
were identified as crucial for the success of the project: informatization of curricula,
networking and multimedia, teachers' education, staff support for the IT at schools and
establishing the lifecycle of IT equipment.

According to the EdReNe Report19, the RO project coordinators in Slovenia managed to
find a solution to merge existing metadata into a new scheme as a result of their
participation in the European Schoolnet CALIBRATE Project20:

“After the end of the RO programme there was no regular funding provided for
functioning of SIO. Only occasional actions to maintain certain sections and
perform quality checks were performed. As a result of the lack of regular
maintenance quite a lot of resources are outdated and without quality control. The
metadata consists of three level descriptions: basic data, detailed technical and
pedagogical description and evaluations. Also metadata scheme was not totally

17
!http://portal.edu.ro/index.php?module=uploads&func=download&fileId=2813!!
18
!http://www.educa.fmf.uni"lj.si/ro/izomre/novice/html/sen96.htm!!
19
!http://edrene.org/results/currentState/slovenia.html!!
20

Introduction to learning repositories in Europe and elsewhere

Introduction to learning repositories in Europe and elsewhere

Recomendados

Recomendados

Mais conteúdo relacionado

Semelhante a Introduction to learning repositories in Europe and elsewhere

Semelhante a Introduction to learning repositories in Europe and elsewhere (20)

Mais de Metaschool Project

Mais de Metaschool Project (14)

Último

Último (20)

Introduction to learning repositories in Europe and elsewhere