Month: November 2004

D-Lib Article – A Web Service Interface for Creating Concept Browsing Interfaces

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november04/sumner/11sumner.html

Some of you may have run across the VUE concept mapping application before. One of its promises is that it will allow you to create concept map interfaces to Fedora-based repositories.

This recent D-Lib article describes a similar innovation, but in this case it is the introduction of a web service-based interface called “Concept Space Interchange Protocol” to support the deployment of concept browsing interfaces to digital libraries. As the paper concludes “The merit of [the] approach lies in its innovative use of web services technology to provide an educationally relevant visualization service across distributed library sites, as opposed to creating a visualization interface for a single library.”

What’s that sound you hear? Listen carefully, it’s the sound of the train leaving the station, and while the library community all quietly climbed aboard, the ed tech community was still debating the need for a train. – SWL

WCET/Edutools LOR Comparative Research Released

http://edutools.info/lor/final_report.doc and
http://edutools.info/lor/final_reviews.xls

Regular readers will know that one of my two jobs is working with the folks at the Western Cooperative on Educational Telecommunications (WCET) on the Edutools project to compare course management systems. In fact I just returns from their annual conference, this year held in San Antonio, Texas, which will be the basis for a few posts.

A few months back I wrote about a project we did last spring with 4 state systems to compare existing Learning Object Repository software. Well finally we have released these findings to the public (part of the agreement was that the partners had exclusive use for 6 months before we published the results).

The final report (co-authored by fellow bloggers Bruce Landon and Brian Lamb, as well as Russ Poulin from WCET) is now available. Probably of more interest is the actual side-by-side comparison of 6 products. I would be very interested in any feedback people had on the actual comparative framework we employed, that is, the features and their groupings on which we reviewed the software. We did base it on a bunch of different LOR architecture and use case documents folks have shared on the web, and I used it in our own LOR project here in BC as the basis for our initial requirements set, so I think it stands up pretty well, but I am always interested in hearing whether others think it presents a valid framework for comparison. It shoud be noted that these reviews are now 6 months old, and these products have been rapidly evolving, so caveat emptor. – SWL

EDUCAUSE REVIEW – Evolving Technologies 2004

http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/erm04/erm0464.asp

Worth a read as a high level overview – most of the topics will be unsurprising to those working in higher ed institutional settings. Topics include Spam Management, Legal P2Ps, Learning Objects, Convergence of Libraries, Digital Repositories, and Web Content Management, Nomadicity and Regional Networks. – SWL