Building the Next-Generation Educational Portal for Estonian

SchoolsMart Laanpere

Tallinn University, Estonia

Educational portals in Estonia

• Since 1997, Miksike.ee: e-worksheets, online competitions, quizzes

• Subject-specific Websites: handicraft, literature• Project-specific: Hello, Spring!• Institutional: science didactics in Tartu University• The first Teachers’ Netgate 1999• Koolielu portal 2001: based on commercial CMS

The new version: Koolielu 2.0• Centre for Educational Technology in Tallinn

University was contracted by the Tiger Leap Foundation

• Software: based on Elgg, LAMP platform• Web 2.0 principles: users as content creators,

tags, RSS, dashboard, widgets, embedding, remixing, metadata

• Integrated with LO Repository (Waramu) and EU Schoolnet’s FIRE federation

• OpenID Single Sign-On, hosted by EENet.ee

Structure of Koolielu 2.0

• News – aggregated from various online sources, • Advertisements – course offerings and job search,• Tools – links to the online or downloadable

educational applications,• Resources – repository of learning objects,• Discussions – traditional online forum,• Communities – every user can initiate an ad-hoc

community which will get automatically a dedicated collaboration space, forum and other collaboration tools.

Dashboard and Profile page

• Elgg widgets, similar to iGoogle or PageFlakes• Dashboard is a default front page for logged-

in users, Profile is a kind of public e-portfolio• Both are populated with Open Social widgets• Default set of our own widgets: My Learning

Resources, My News, etc• User-defined extras, layout and access rights

Content management

• Different workflows:– News and advertisements: submitted by any

authenticated user, reviewed/published by editors– Learning resources: submitted by anyone (as a file

or URL with LOM), reviewed/published by subject moderators

– Forum discussions: anonymous participants allowed (CAPTCHA for humanity check)

• Automatic archiving

Learning Object Repository: Waramu

• Waramu was developed also in CET• Java application, MySQL database• No user interface, is used not by humans but

by other applications via SOAP Web services• LRE metadata application profile (EUN)• Connected with FIRE federation, LRE can

harvest metadata from Waramu: http://lreforschools.eun.org

Mapping LO’s to curriculum

• Every Learning Object in Koolielu/Waramu is mapped to relevant curriculum topics (annotated as category in the metadata)

• EUN’s Multilingual Thesaurus was too broad, we developed a new taxonomy based on Estonian national curriculum

• Is used for browsing and searching Learning Objects, also for analysing curriculum coverage with LOs

Sharing

• Tags, tag clouds• Categories: subjects, curriculum topics• RSS feeds• Bookmarks: Elgg’s standard feature• Recommendations of Learning Objects by

subject moderators• Recommending LO’s, communities and

articles according to subject area

Community building

• Friends: like in FaceBook, only asymmetrical• Friend collections: a set of friends • Communities: traditional Elgg communities

and adapted course communities• Anyone could initiate a new community• Koolielu communities as Virtual Learning

Environment

Conclusions• Agile software development, weekly consultations

with the client (Tiger Leap Foundation) and participatory design sessions with teachers have changed the initial concept and schedule

• Is developed as open source software, can be re-used in other countries (if TLF agrees)

• Future developments: teacher’s e-portfolio, competency management etc.

• Current instance: http://www.koolielu.ee, • Development: http://trac.htk.tlu.ee/koolielu2• Repository Waramu: http://trac.htk.tlu.ee/waramu