practical interoperability for opdf recipients
DESCRIPTION
talk for OPDF recipients on some practical issues for making their content more widely usableTRANSCRIPT
Practical Interoperabilityand Sharing for OPDF
Recipients
Scott Leslie
BCcampus
January 12, 2009
Outline
Why Interoperability
What is SOL*R
Getting an Account
Licensing Your Resource
Contributing Resources
Formats/Practical Interoperability
The Wiki
Why InteroperabilityThe OPDF is a SHAREABLE CONTENT fund
It funds content that SHOULD be EASILY REUSABLE by others
For content to be REUSED it should bePreviewable in SOL*R
EASILY imported and used in MANY different environments, NOT just the one it was built in
What is SOL*Rhttp://solr.bccampus.ca/
Mechanism to share OPDF-funded resources securely
Contains a copy of your course content that others can link to or download for use in their own environments
Getting an account/Logging InGo to https://portal.bccampus.ca/
Follow the links to “Access Shareable Object Learning Resources (SOL*R)”
You will either be prompted to login if you already have an activated account, or to get one
Activation can take up to 1 day, but usually just a few minutes
License your contentIt is completely optional, but you may want to include a clear license IN the content itself (e.g. in a footer or front page)
Go to http://solr.bccampus.ca/bcc/BCcommons/publish/publish.html follow the instructions
Paste the resulting license text in your course template’s footer or front page
Contribute a ResourceLog into SOL*R
Click on ‘Contribute a Resource’
Is it a ‘Full Course’? A ‘Learning Object’? A Tool or Technology?
Which license did you choose, BC Commons or Creative Commons
The format you are submitting (more later)
OPDF Tracking Number
More on FormatsSOL*R can accept pretty much anything, BUT…
…it can only create PREVIEWS forIMS Content Packages
HTML files and sites
Word and other relatively common web formats (PPT, PDF, image formats, Flash)
Previewing is important becauseIt helps people to EASILY assess if the content is useful to them
People can LINK to content they want to reuse instead of having to import it
ExamplesIMS Content Package
Zip of Web Content (Example 2)
Individual File
Binary File
WebCT Backup
WebCT Module Export
Moodle Export
Current Issues (WebCT)WebCT BACKUPs are NOT an interoperable format
They can not be previewed
ONLY other WebCT users can restore them
WebCT ‘Exports’ only work a Module at a time
This can be problematic if you are contributing a Full Course worth of content
Current Issues (Moodle)Moodle Course Backups are NOT an interoperable format
They are not previewable
They are only EASILY useable by other Moodle users
Best PracticesCreate IMS Content Packages OUTSIDE of LMS and then import these
Challenge: IMS Content Package authoring can be difficult if you are not familiar with this
Create HTML (and other) content OUTSIDE the LMS, add a single ‘Index’ file to organize it, zip and upload
This will work in ALL environments
Best Practices (2)Create Web standards compliant content
Use a good Web page editor
Ideally, if the editor has such settings, set pages to be Strict XHtml 1.1 conformant
Cf. http://validator.w3.org/
Create Accessible contentNot just Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/) but
USABLE content for people with disabilities
Best Practice Wikihttp://solr.bccampus.ca/wiki/
An attempt to create a space for community contributed suggestions on what works best
PLEASE contribute; a solution that originates with practitioners is FAR more likely to work than one which is centrally imposed
ThanksPLEASE feel free to contact me at
Or
250-415-3490
If you have questions or want help planning out your strategy for getting your content reused widely