|
|
Vol. 27, No. 12
March 12, 2001
TeleEducation NB and the Electronic Text Centre at UNBF are creating a “ster” — a “learnster.” “This is the future,” says visionary Rory McGreal, executive director of TeleEducation NB, about their materials-sharing system for educators. “We are pushing this internationally, and our learnster could become a world protocol.”
Like other Internet dissemination systems, their learnster allows people to share and construct a variety of multimedia objects. It differs though in a couple of significant ways. At the heart of learnster is a highly sophisticated indexing system or protocol based on international standards. This makes it possible for people to conduct advanced search and retrieval across databases distributed in different places and to customize the presentation of information to their own requirements. And learnster will respect the rights of developers of the material in the system.
Alan Burk, director of UNB’s Electronic Text Centre underlines the importance of such a system to educators. “Increasingly they are using online technologies such as the World Wide Web to find resources for professional development and to provide material to their students and colleagues,” he says. “Finding high-quality, relevant information on the Web is much harder than finding it in a traditional library. The Web lacks the recordkeeping that libraries have had in place for centuries.”
Images, videos, animations and other non-text objects did not show up in the keyword searches provided by Internet search engines. “Our protocol, called CANCORE, will allow this to be done,” Dr. Burk explains. “CANCORE stands for Canadian Core Learning Resource Metadata Specification, and it’s a product of several national collaborative learning projects.”
Mr. McGreal is delighted with the recommendation of the recent national Advisory Committee for Online Learning report calling for the creation of a pan-Canadian learning objects repository. “We are in full alignment with it. TeleEducation NB and the UNB Electronic Text Centre have taken a leading role with the creation of CANCORE.”
Mr. McGreal piloted this national initiative, while the Text Centre carries out the development, working in collaboration with the Campus Alberta Repository of Educational Objects (CAREO) and the Broadband Enabled Lifelong Learning Environment (BELLE). Funding and support have been provided by Industry Canada/CANARIE, Alberta Learning, Netera Alliance, TeleCampus.edu, and the Electronic Text Centre.
Greg Sprague, executive director of Integrated Technology Services (ITS) at UNBF, sees learnster as an exciting, strategic initiative. “It brings the power of modern technology to the classroom where it will dramatically impact the whole teaching and learning process,” he says. ITS is a partner in the project providing hardware, software and networking infrastructure as well as technical support.