CALIBRATE and CAS/CDGS resources

Vladimir Batagelj, Iztok Kavkler, Matija Lokar

Faculty of mathematics and physicsUniversity of Ljubljana, Slovenia

CALIBRATE

• ICT in educational process is not as spread as we could expect to be

• Several reasons– plenty of the resources available on WWW– Problems to find appropriate learning resources

• 6th Framework Project CALIBRATE– Support collaborative use and exchange of learning

resources in schools– Main aim: to provide brokerage system among

national repositorities of edu. materials

SIO

• Slovenian Educational network (SIO)

• Substantional amount of electronic teaching resources (ETR): worksheets based on CAS and CDGS

SIO – CAS resources

Survey

• Within teachers groups– To many /not enough resources

• Slovene language

– Problems with quality– Modifying the resources

• Closed form solutions are not popular• To adapt the ETR to teacher’s style, age of

students, cultural background ...

– Lack of proper classification

About the project

• 5th FP CELEBRATE– Context ELEarning with BRoAdband TEchnologies– Demonstrated: Not enough resources, not enough

areas covered

• CALIBRATE– Calibrating eLearning in schools– 8 ministries of education

• Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia

– October 2005 – March 2008

Main goals – work packages

• Classification of teaching resources

• Learning resources exchange (LRE)

• leMill: toolbox for adapting and producing teaching resources

• Evaluation

• Dissemination

Classification of teaching resources

• Differencies in school programs

• Mostly cover the same set of topics

• Way to search using own curriculum schema

• To find mappings between curricula in several states

• Create taxonomy: set of keyords, with unique mapping to every curriculum

Learning resources exchange (LRE)

• Metadata: description of ETR• LRE – to enable exchange of metadata• Each repository: own set of metadata• Common standard: adapted LOM format • No changes in repositories• Interface for searching and converting its

metadata• Brokerage system, federated search, basic

software support to simplify the connection

LeMill: toolbox for adapting and producing teaching

resources

• To help teachers to adapt the ETR

• To share adapted content

• Web based authoring system

• Cooperative model of work

• Community

• Creative Commons share-alike license

Evaluation and disemination

• Test group of teachers

• 20 schools in four states

• Workshops

• Questionnaires

• Educate the teachers

• To reach the “critical mass”

Finding ETRs

• Substantional amount of math ETR– www.mathcentre.ac.uk, www.e-um.si,

www.mathe-online.at, www.math.com ...– Google: math, teaching, resources

• 6.5 million hits

• Teachers claim– Not enough appropriate resources– How to find a needle in tha hay

• Appropriate resource– Quality control– The “right one

Classification and Metadata

• Why to use Calibrate, not Google– Search for linear function

– HIT #3: We have extended the principle of consensus scoring in a Non-Linear Neural Network manner. This original global scoring function is a combination of the ...gfscore.cnrs-mrs.fr/ -

– Problems with context• Educational repositories

– Metadada augemented with educational resources• Exchange of metadata

– Language neutral keywords (international thesaurus)– Approximate age at which the subject is taught– “curriculum awearness” – curriculum mapping

• Supplying metada– Other projects, MELT

Language issues

• We “solved the search”• What about the content• In part

– LeMill

• Ideal resources– Those who “travel well”– Not text resources

• “Actual” math content• CAS/CDGS worksheets

CAS / CDGS resources

• Surprisingly few• Many content creators are not aware of CAS / CDGS

tools– Descriptions missing on national repositories

• Not equipped with metadata• Problems with properietary formats

– A call to “standard” CAS language

• Open licence tools– GeoGebra, CaR, Maxima

• Exchange ot ETR– CC license – LeMill

Some practical examples