This document discusses the development of the Organic.Edunet network of content providers on organic agriculture. It describes the network's expansion over three phases, adding new collections from projects and affiliated providers. Tools like Confolio and AgLR are used to harvest, ingest, or create metadata compliant with the Organic.Edunet Application Profile. Efforts are underway to improve multilingual support and user engagement within the network.
Prelims of Kant get Marx 2.0: a general politics quiz
Developing a network of content providers: The case of Organic.Edunet
1. DEVELOPING A NETWORK OF
CONTENT PROVIDERS:
THE CASE OF
ORGANIC.EDUNET
Vassilis Protonotarios
Agricultural Biotechnologist, PhD
Agro-Know Technologies, Greece
3. VASSILIS IS AN AGRONOMIST!
BSc, MSc, and PhD in Agricultural Biotechnology
Agricultural University of Athens
Got involved with metadata during the
Organic.Edunet eContentPlus project (2007-2009)
Working in various EU-funded projects, mostly
supporting & coordinating curriculum development
and content population
Organic.Balkanet LdV project (2009-2011)
CerOrganic LdV project (2009-2011)
VOA3R ICT-PSP (2010-2013)
Organic.Lingua ICT-PSP project (2011-2014)
4. MAIN AREAS OF INTEREST
Management of collections
Educational metadata
Expansion of the Organic.Edunet network
Dissemination
as well as
Blogging
Tweeting
Cycling
Taking photos
6. CONTENT ANALYSIS
Currently almost 11,000 resources available
through Organic.Edunet
15 interconnected repositories from 13 countries
Resources appropriate for school & university
level, as well as vocational education & training
Vast majority are web-based resources (websites)
Content available in 11 languages
Metadata available in 16 languages; there are
metadata in 8 languages max.
9. ORGANIC.EDUNET WEB PORTAL – THE STATS*
*01/01/2010 -1/12/2012
almost 11,000 available resources
resources available in 11 languages
Metadata available in 8 languages for
many of them
more than 152,000 visits from 192 countries
468,000 page views
more than 124,000 unique visitors
mostly new visitors / 75% search traffic
10. AN EVOLVING NETWORK
Expansion of network in three phases so far
1. Phase 1: The Organic.Edunet project (2008-2010)
2. Phase 2: The related projects (2009-now)
3. Phase 3: The new collections and affiliated content
providers (2010-now)
11. PHASE 1 – THE ORGANIC.EDUNET
PROJECT PARTNERS
Eleven (11) interconnected repositories
Content providers include
Institutional repositories (e.g. university repositories)
Schools (e.g. Rural Wings)
Associations (e.g. Ecologica)
User communities (AGROASIS)
Archives
Almost 10,000 metadata records provided
12. PHASE 2 – PROJECTS RELATED TO
ORGANIC.EDUNET
Four new interconnected repositories
Organic.Balkanet training curriculum (about 100 records)
CerOrganic training curriculum (about 300 records)
Organic.Lingua
ProdINRA (about 2,000 records)
content
TrAgLOR (Turkish Agricultural Learning Objects
Repository) (about 300 records)
Material related to vocational training and higher
education
Multilingual metadata
Two existing repositories will be enhanced
The Miksike collection on organic agriculture
The Spanish repository on organic agriculture
13. PHASE 3 – NEW COLLECTIONS &
AFFILIATED CONTENT PROVIDERS
6 new collections:
Digital Green
OER Africa
Green OER
YouTube videos on organic Agriculture
Slideshare presentations on organic agriculture
Flickr photos on organic agriculture
Small collections, based on quality over quantity
Manual annotation of a small number of records
16. CONNECTING TO THE ORGANIC.EDUNET
NETWORK GUIDES
Information on “How to connect” is available
through a Wiki page:
http://wiki.agroknow.gr/organic_edunet/index.php/Main_Page
18. 3 WAYS TO CONNECT TO ORGANIC.EDUNET
1. Harvesting of metadata
example: existing and new collections in Confolio
harvested through an OAI-PMH target
existence of various sets, that may be harvested
individually
Metadata records are validated and harvested
1. Ingestion of metadata
example: content from social sources
XML files retrieved indirectly from
YouTube/Flickr/Slideshare etc. & ingested in compliant
tools (Confolio, AgLR)
Metadata records are validated and harvested
1. Creation of metadata
Example: not organized collections / individuals
Use of AgLR/Confolio for the creation of metadata records
Metadata records are validated and harvested
19. 1. HARVESTING OF METADATA
Usually the easiest way of content
integration
Exposure of metadata through an OAI-PMH
target
Validationof OAI-PMH target -> Validation service
Metadata validation -> Metadata validation service
Metadata mapping might be required
Currently manual mapping
Use of (Ag)Mint is planned
20. 1. HARVESTING OF METADATA:
WORKFLOW
1. A content provider contacts Organic.Edunet
2. The appropriateness of the repository content is
checked against the Organic.Edunet Quality
Criteria
3. Basic information is requested from the content
provider in a registration form
4. The target is checked using the Organic.Edunet
validation service
5. The metadata structure is checked against the
Organic.Edunet IEEE LOM AP using the
Organic.Edunet metadata validation service
6. Metadata are harvested automatically
7. If mapping is needed, then the metadata
elements are manually mapped.
21. 2. INGESTION OF METADATA
In cases where harvesting is not an option
e.g. not supported by the tool, no tool available
Metadata need to be compatible with
Organic.Edunet IEEE LOM AP
Mapping may be required in some cases
Metadata need to be ingested in a
compatible tool and probably enriched
Example: The case of YouTube XML files
Content needs to meet the Organic.Edunet
Quality Criteria
22. 2. INGESTION OF METADATA:
WORKFLOW
1. A content provider contacts Organic.Edunet
2. The appropriateness of the repository content is
checked against the Organic.Edunet Quality
Criteria
3. Basic information is requested from the content
provider in a registration form
4. A sample number of metadata records (e.g. in xml
format) is checked using the Organic.Edunet
metadata validation service
5. Metadata are manually ingested
6. If mapping is needed, then the metadata elements
are manually mapped before ingestion.
7. In case of additional content, new manual ingestion
needs to take place
23. INGESTION VS HARVESTING
Trying to encourage content providers to
enable/support harvesting of their metadata records.
24. 3. CREATION OF METADATA
In cases where harvesting/ingestion is not
an option
e.g. offline collections, not digitized material etc.
Metadata records created from scratch
Fully compatible with Organic.Edunet IEEE LOM
AP if a compatible tool is used (AgLR / Confolio)
Mapping is needed in case of APs other than
Organic.Edunet IEEE LOM.
25. 3. CREATION OF METADATA:
WORKFLOW
1. Types of
Content locally stored Non-digitized Content
(e.g. hard disk) content New content
2. Creation of
metadata
Metadata Annotation Tool
3. Validation of
metadata
4. Publication
through
Organic.Edunet
Web portal
27. THE ORGANIC.EDUNET AP (1/2)
Based on the IEEE LOM AP, standard for
describing educational resources
Slightly modified in order to match better the
annotation of agricultural educational resources
Selectionof metadata elements
Changes in the status of elements (e.g. mandatory)
Introduction of required extensions
Multilingual AP: Currently available in 16
languages, including Arabic, Chinese & Hindi
Recently updated to a new version, reflecting
the requirements of the Organic.Lingua EU
project
28. THE ORGANIC.EDUNET AP (2/2)
The new Organic.Edunet AP is available at:
http://wiki.agroknow.gr/organic_lingua/Organic.Edunet_Metadata_
29. THE ORGANIC.EDUNET
ONTOLOGY
A conceptual model useful for classifying
learning materials on the Organic Agriculture
(OA) and Agroecology (AE) domain
Used in the Organic.Edunet web portal for the
semantic search
Recently revised in the context of the
Organic.Lingua project
31. ORGANIC.EDUNET – THE TOOLS
1. Confolio Repository Tool
Used by the Organic.Edunet consortium content providers as well as by
some of the new ones
Folder-based organization of records
Integrates the previous Organic.Edunet IEEE LOM AP (v2.0)
Multilingual user interface – currently available in 17 languages
1. Agricultural Learning Repository (AgLR) Tool
A tool developed by Agro-Know to support new content providers
Integrates the latest Organic.Edunet IEEE LOM AP (v3.0)
Will integrate the latest Organic.Edunet ontology
Supports automatic translation of metadata records (Title, Description &
Keywords)
Collection-based organization of records
Multilingual user interface – currently available in 10 languages
34. ABOUT THE TOOLS
All repository tools that can expose metadata
through an OAI-PMH target can be used
Metadata will be automatically harvested, after they
are mapped to the Organic.Edunet metadata AP
Repository tools that cannot expose metadata
through an OAI-PMH target can also be used
Metadata will have to be exported and then ingested
to a repository tool capable of exposing metadata
through OAI-PMH
36. 1. MULTILINGUALITY
Automatic translation tools to be integrated in
both AgLR and Web portal
Work by XEROX (SMT) and CELI (CLIR),
adapted in the agricultural sector
Automatic translation of Title, Description &
Keywords
Additional services will be used in case of
languages not supported by the aforementioned
tools
37. 2. USER ENGAGEMENT
User Generated Content widget developed by K-C
Users allowed to contribute their own content
(metadata) using an easy-to-use form
This content includes suggestions for new resources
and revisions/translations of existing ones
38. 3. EXTENDING THE NETWORK
Discussions with new content providers
From EU, India and Africa
Revisions in the content integration workflow
Revision of the quality criteria
Definition of the scope of the network