Mark Power

March sees the end of the JISC funded XCRI Support Project as it signs off leaving the development of the XCRI (eXchanging Course Related Information) specification for sharing (and advertising) course information looking very healthy indeed.

The support project picked up where the original XCRI Reference Model project left off. Having identified the marketing and syndication of course descriptions as a significant opportunity for innovation – due to the general practice in this area being one of huge efforts around re-typing of information to accommodate various different systems, sites and services…then to have that information maintained separately in various places – the XCRI Reference Model project mapped out the spaces of course management, curriculum development and course marketing and provided the community with a common standard for exchanging course related information. This would streamline approaches to the syndication of such information and give us the benefits of cost savings when it comes to collecting and managing the data and opens up the opportunities for a more sustainable approach to lifelong learning services that rely on course information from learning providers.

Over the course of the next three years the XCRI Support project developed the XCRI Course Advertising Profile (XCRI-CAP), an XML specification designed to enable course offerings to be shared by providers (rather like an RSS feed) and by other services such as lifelong learning sites, course search sites and other services that support learners in trying to find the right courses for them. Through the supervision and support of several institutional implementation projects the support project – a partnership between JISC CETIS at the University of Bolton (http://bit.ly/PZdKw), Mark Stubbs of Manchester Metropolitan University (http://bit.ly/PZdKw) and Alan Paull of APS Limited (http://bit.ly/cF6Fhd) – promoted the uptake and sustainability of XCRI through engagement with the European standards process and endorsement by the UK Information Standards Board. Through this work the value of XCRI-CAP was demonstrated so successfully as to ensure it was placed on the strategic agenda of national agencies.

Hotcourses manages the National Learning Directory under contract from the Learning and Skills Council (LSC). With over 900,000 course records and 10,000 learning providers the NLD is possibly the largest source of information about learning opportunities in the UK, which learners and advisers can access through dozens of national, regional and local web portals. Working with a number of Further Education colleges Hotcourses is now developing and piloting ‘bulk upload’ facilities using XCRI to ease the burden on learning providers supplying and maintaining their information on the NLD. UCAS also continues to make progress towards XCRI adoption. Most recently, at the ISB Portfolio Learning Opportunities and Transcripts Special Interest Group on January 27, 2010, UCAS colleagues described a major data consolidation project that should pave the way for a data transfer initiative using XCRI, and cited growing demand from UK HEIs for data transfer rather than course-by-course data entry through UCAS web-link. The project is a two-phase one, with XCRI implementation in phase II, which is due to deliver sometime in 2011.

Having ensured that the specification gained traction and uptake the project has worked extensively at developing the core information used by XCRI into a European Norm with harmonisation from other standards that addressed this space developed elsewhere across Europe. It is this process which has seen the evolution of XCRI from a standalone specification to a UK application profile of a recognised international standard. This could now be transitioned to an actual British Standard through BSI IST 43 (the committee of the British Standards Institution which looks at technical standards for learning education and training). At the same time adoption of the specifications were continued to be supported through engagement with policymakers and suppliers while the technical tools developed for adopters continued to be updated and maintained.

A couple of key tools were developed by the support project to assist implementers of XCRI. An aggregator engine was setup and maintained by the project and is demonstrated at http://www.xcri.org/aggregator/. This shows how its possible to deploy an aggregator setup that pulls in courses from several providers, and offers a user interface with basic features such as searching, browsing, bookmarking, tags and so on. It also demonstrates some value-added aspects such as geocoding the course venues and displaying them on Google Maps. Once you’ve had a look at the demonstrator you can get hold of the code for it at http://bit.ly/9eViM2
The project also developed an XCRI Validator to help implementers check their data structure and content. This goes beyond structural validation to also analyse content and provide advice on common issues such as missing information. Currently the development of this is very much at a beta stage but implementers can try out this early proof-of-concept at http://bit.ly/aeLArY. Accompanying this is a blog post describing how to use the validator at http://bit.ly/aHoJtH

Up to press there have been around 15-20 “mini-projects” which were funded to pilot implementation of XCRI within institutions. These looked at developing course databases using the specification, extending existing systems and methods to map to XCRI and the general implementation of generating the information and the exporting of this via web services. Not to say that this was the only project activity around XCRI. Various other Lifelong Learning projects have had an XCRI element to them along the way and all these have contributed to forming an active community around the development and promotion of the spec.

This community’s online activity is centred around a wiki and discussion forum on the XCRI Support Project website at http://xcri.org and while the support project is now officially at an end, the website will stay around as long as there is a community using it - currently its maintained by CETIS. Some XCRI.org content may move to JISC Advance as XCRI moves from innovation into mainstream adoption. However, as long as people are trying out new things with XCRI - whether thats vocabularies and extensions or new exchange protocols - then XCRI.org provides a place to talk about it, with the LLL & WFD project at Liverpool (CCLiP - http://www.liv.ac.uk/cll/cclip/) currently looking at how to improve the site and provide more information for non-technical audiences.

More information on the XCRI projects can be found at the JISC website, specifically at http://bit.ly/awevwQ

I think we’re getting to the point where, by now, many of you will have found it hard to avoid hearing about the latest technology buzz. No, not Cloud Computing. This technology is, shall we say, more ‘tangible’. It is - quite literally - technology that you can hold in your hand.

Yes folks, by now many of you will be aware of this growing buzz around the rather snazzy and futuristic sounding ‘Augmented Reality’ (AR). The headlines are growing, the clamour is getting more excitable by the day and even though it’s only really hit the public consciousness relatively recently, I don’t think we’re far away from that glorious, early-doors hype bubble popping to the sounds of “well…there’s not many apps!”, “is it just for restaurants and tube stations?” and “it’s not a game-changer, it’s a fad!”. For that last one just look at the James Cameron’s Avatar 3D story (and nobody’s even seen it yet!)

Still. It’s an exciting technology and one that - like Cameron’s 3D in cinema - will be a game-changer (imo), not simply a fad, given the opportunities it will open up to enable and enhance the immersive delivery of rich content to mobile platforms. As with anything though, it’s not going to happen overnight. Right now the bugbear with 3D is the lack of supporting cinema screens and similar applies to AR capable devices. However, that will inevitably change.

There are 2 types of AR applications at the moment - Mobile & Desktop. Desktop uses marker-based images to create animations (both 2D & ‘3D’) and - in some cases - also include interactive controls. I’ll cover this in a future post I think. For this brief post though I’m talking about Mobile AR. This is where an application uses your phone’s GPS to know where you are and its magnetometer – or more simply, the digital compass – to know which way you’re facing. Couple those together then add in the live video feed coming through your phone’s camera and bingo! We have location aware data overlayed on your image of the world around you.

At the moment I’ve got 3 AR apps on my iPhone - Robotvision (http://robotvision-ar.com/), Wikitude (http://www.wikitude.org/) & Layar (http://layar.com/). I’ll write a post in which I cover these soon but for now the obvious question is simply, “well, how could they be used in a learning activity?” - Oh and yes, I’m excluding ‘learning where the nearest Costa Coffee is’ from my criteria. Now I’m no teacher but I can see this…

Imagine, you’re studying Local History and looking at the changing architecture and layout of the town centre. You stand on a street, point your phone* at a scene and overlayed on the live image are archive photographs of the location spanning the decades. Touch the image of the Town Hall and you’re given the option of viewing a Flickr pool, visiting the town hall’s website, or going to the Wikipedia page and reading up on the history of the building. Buildings, street views, whole town layouts perhaps..

* I must point out that I use the term ‘phone’ very loosely here. What I really mean is the “smartphone”, the pocket sized computer. The gadget in my pocket that is already more powerful than the old PC I have in the back bedroom.

Or let’s say you’re on a Geology field trip, trekking around the Isle of Wight. Pointing your mobile device  (see, we’re evolving already!) at a nearby outcrop and there on top of the scene, through your camera, are some controls that will display detailed information about what you’re looking at. That it’s made of sandstone perhaps, that it’s river formed as opposed to wind. The difference between river and wind formations!

So…AR meets Social Media meets The Cloud you could say. Like I say, there’ll be further posts around this from me - where I’ll attempt to look a bit closer at the applications out there and my thoughts on them.

Cheers! M

Hmm…a bit of a rhyme there! This is fairly old news I guess but something I have only just come across as I’ve only recently started to have look over the fence into the mobile learning garden.

I’ve been reading about staff at Hilton Garden Inns in the USA doing work-based training on Sony PSPs. They’ve had a SIMS-like game developed for the Sony handheld device which is designed to train its employees in customer services. Created especially for Hilton Garden Inn by Virtual Heroes, Inc., Ultimate Team Play puts team members in a virtual Hilton Garden Inn hotel and in various scenarios, they will have to stop and decide what their best course of action will be to make sure they are able to fulfill a guest’s request and/or complete a specific job task within a limited time. Their immediate or non-immediate actions toward guests—since guest interaction is the primary focus of the game— will directly affect the mood of the guest as well as the hotel’s SALT (Satisfaction and Loyalty Tracking) scores. Nice.

Game-based customer service training

Now this isn’t the only product that Virtual Heroes Inc. have developed. They’ve also made training simulations for the U.S. Army Special Forces and U.S. Secret Service and HumanSIM, which enables health care professionals to sharpen their assessment and decision-making skills - much better to do that virtually than on a real person I think!

Training for Healthcare

Now, ok…we’re talking about a company with huge resources on one side and Government training on another but still, it’s a nice example of technology enhanced learning is it not! When I think about Mobile Learning right now I think of phone handsets, best case scenario iPhone/iPod Touch Apps (for me that’s the best handheld device at the moment). But I also like to wonder what technology my sons will be using in the years to come (they are 9, 8 & 4)…and this fits the bill. They’re glued to their PSPs & NDS’s and they like wandering through virtual worlds such as Runescape and Club Penguin, carrying out tasks. It strikes me as a no-brainer that education will soon have to make strides into these worlds. 

Anyone know of similar work in this country?

Spotted a post on Lifehacker today concerning a possible future service from Google. A reader has spotted an option in the recently released Picasa for Mac beta to “move photo to Google Web Drive”. Mmmm…interesting.

Now I’ve already taken advantage of my Gmail space, using that as an online storage container - those interested in doing the same might be interested in the Firefox extension but Google Web Drive might just be more of an ‘official’, more focused service from Google…which would make sense as it’s an area you would think Google is perfectly placed for.

Strange thing is that I can’t actually see the option in my menus on Picasa for Mac, which is - incidentally - an application that I love. I always liked using it in my Windows days and am very happy to see it finally touchdown for Mac. So I would certainly recommend it to others.