Dynamic Learning Maps
The semantic web fused with web 2.0 technologies.
The semantic web fused with web 2.0 technologies.
favOERites is a simple non-proprietary social bookmaking tool, specifically for OERs, to enhance resource discovery across the higher education community. It was developed in a JISC-CETIS funded mini project which completed in November 2011. Although the project was extremely ambitious, we are really pleased with what we've managed to achieve over the 5 month project:
favOERites allows you to record bookmarks in a central place, storing licence information against the record via an easy to use bookmarklet. The bookmarklet automatically picks up licencing information from a page. Social elements have been included within the application, such as commenting and voting records up or down. End users can create ‘playlists’, which consist of collections of bookmarks for a particular purpose. Authentication is via OpenID, or via Twitter or Facebook. There is no need to register to use the site. An extremely powerful open API has been produced that allows end users and other systems to retrieve data about the records, including social/paradata elements. The API also allows this data to be added and edited.
Try out favOERites. Access the demonstration version at http://oerbookmarking.ncl.ac.uk. You can login using OpenID (e.g. through your existing Google account).
The source code for favOERites is available on github: https://github.com/favOERites/favOERites under an MIT Open Source licence. Paul and James developed favOERites in Django.
favOERites comes with a rich API that is openly available (http://oerbookmarking.ncl.ac.uk/api/) and includes examples of how to use it.
Project report (brief summary)
The project team at Newcastle University:
We would like to thank:
Things began at a OER Hack Day, organised by CETIS UKOLN, where groups worked up innovative ideas for OERs. Paul Horner, James Outterside, Kate Lomax (London Deanery), Nick Sheppard (Leeds Met) worked up some initial ideas around social bookmarking for OERs. These formed the foundations for the proposal for OER bookmarking for the JISC-CETIS mini project call put to the OER Technical Interest Group.
The project built on the substantial experience of OERs developed at the MEDEV Subject Centre and fitted in with an existing desire to feed OERs into Dynamic Learning Maps, where they could be integrated within curriculum maps.
The problem space: Our initial experience in DLM was that OER discovery and harvesting was problematic in relation to specificity and granularitry - its easy to find resources for high level topics (e.g. "Geography") but harder to find OERs for specific topics. Also, large aggregators seemed to have problems with specificity and resources for mixed educational levels. Therefore we wanted to develop the favOERite OER Bookmarking system to allow end users to store references to resources easily outside of any system, with the ability to then pull these into third party tools such as DLMs.
The aims of this project were as follows:
1. To develop a non-proprietary social bookmaking service to enhance resource discovery across the community. This will be designed specifically for OERs.
2. To provide an openly available and well documented API, enabling 3rd party systems to access and add to the resources and associated ‘paradata’.
3. To pilot the API and system in Dynamic Learning Maps. This will harvest resources for specific topics and add descriptors and links to these within personal and curriculum maps.
For more information on the JISC OER Bookmarking Project, please fill in the contact form.
Check out CaPRéT - the other project funded by this OER mini project call.
