Cuban Grid for Learning CuGfL Cubaenergia Dic 2006

1. Cuban Grid for Learning CuGfL Cubaenergia Dic 2006

2. What is CuGfL? CuGfL is a One-Stop-Center for quality assured online learning content with the aim to promote and support the lifelong learning agenda in Cuba to accelerate the growth of K-Society

3. CuGfL Objectives • To enhance discoverability of e-learning content from heterogenous sources • To develop e-learning standards to ensure conformance and adoption of best practices in e-learning content and systems • To provide e-Learning systems and tools to enable and support e-Learning activities and processes for the purpose of life-long learning • To encourage sharing and development of local/indigenous content

4. Life-Long Learning encompasses … Lifelong Learning Informal Formal Non-Formal CP 5 CP 6 CP 2 CP 4 CP 1 CP 3 CP n CP n CP n CuGfL Portal Learners Formal education: the hierarchically structured, chronologically graded 'education system', running from primary school through the university and including, in addition to general academic studies, a variety of specialised programmes and institutions for full-time technical and professional training. Non-formal education: any organised educational activity outside the established formal system - whether operating separately or as an important feature of some broader activity - that is intended to serve identifiable learning clienteles and learning objectives. Informal education: the truly lifelong process whereby every individual acquires attitudes, values, skills and knowledge from daily experience and the educative influences and resources in his or her environment - from family and neighbours, from work and play, from the market place, the library and the mass media Note : CP – Content Provider

5. Current Scenario … Gov Agencies Libraries Universities Ministries e-Learning e.g. Moodle, Univir Users will have to go to multiple different portals / websites to access or to look for content. Portals or websites that are less discoverable (lack of promotional, poor search rankings, etc) are likely to loose some of their potential users, making the content under utilize. Portal / Website Repositories (content, digital assets, metadata)

6. With CuGfL … Increase chances the content being discovered as it is being properly described in the metadata. Increase number of visitors to content owners’ portals/websites. Gov Agencies Libraries Universities Content still resides on content owners’ servers, fully controlled and managed by them. Ministries e-Learning initiatives CuGfL Portal Users can still directly access the content owners’ portals/websites. Users only need to search for content at one central location (portal). Portal / Website Repositories (content, digital assets, metadata)

7. CuGfL Portal – A snapshot Members login – more features inside. Current theme Target audience groups List of content subjects Search engine Metadata

8. CuGfL Framework e-Learning Community E-Learning community Learners Enablers Providers Access Infrastructure Standard Standard for e-learning content & systems. Integrating Platform (Systems and Tools) Integrating platform that allows online learning to take place. Authoring Tools Enterprise Systems Delivery & Collaboration Tools Content Free and commercial content for formal, non-formal and informal learning. Digital Asset Packaged Content Metadata

9. Framework : Standard Objectives • to guide CuGfL content providers to conform to a set of standards and guidelines for content development • as a single point of reference to all relevant e-Learning standards • to achieve Interoperability, Reusability, Manageability, Accessibility and Discoverability of CuGfL content and systems

10. Framework : Integrating Platform • CuGfL Portal • Learning Support System • Tools & Services • Metadata Repository - a repository of all catalogues of learning content • Metadata Management System - facilitates the metadata tagging process which conforms to Dublin Core and SCORM • User Management System – manages user profiles

11. Framework : Content CuGfL shall host both free and commercial content. • Metadata Records – a collection of indexes of all e-Learning content • Digital Asset – A collection of reusable learning object (RLO) such as images, audio clips, video clips and text. • Packaged Content – Digital assets that are combined into a self-contain package ready to be delivered to end user for consumption.

12. Milestones Achieved • Completed Metadata Management Systems - Jun 2007 • CuGfL portal is live http://www.cursosenlinea.cu http://www.redciencia.cu - April 2006 • Completed CuGfL Guidelines on - Dic 2007 Web Resources, Learning Objects and e-Learning Systems • Submitted guidelines - Sept 2007 • Workshops/Seminar • Metadata workshops for librarians – Jun- oct 2006 • Seminar on Metadata for Content Providers - Jul- nov 2006 APPLICATION LAYER

13. Moodle – Learning management system Introduction • Moodle is a software package for producing internet-based courses and web sites. It's an ongoing development project designed to support a social constructionist framework of education. • Moodle is provided freely as Open Source software (under the GNU Public License).Moodle will run on any computer that can run PHP, and can support many types of database (particularly MySQL). • The word Moodle was originally an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, which is mostly useful to programmers and education theorists.

14. Moodle – Learning management system Features • Overall design • Promotes a social constructionist pedagogy (collaboration, activities, critical reflection, etc) • Suitable for 100% online classes as well as supplementing face-to-face learning • Simple, lightweight, efficient, compatible, low-tech browser interface • Easy to install on almost any platform that supports PHP. Requires only one database (and can share it). • Full database abstraction supports all major brands of database (except for initial table definition) • Course listing shows descriptions for every course on the server, including accessibility to guests. • Courses can be categorised and searched - one Moodle site can support thousands of courses • Emphasis on strong security throughout. Forms are all checked, data validated, cookies encrypted etc • Most text entry areas (resources, forum postings etc) can be edited using an embedded WYSIWYG HTML editor

15. Moodle – Learning management system Features • Site management • Site is managed by an admin user, defined during setup • Plug-in "themes" allow the admin to customise the site colours, fonts, layout etc to suit local needs • Plug-in activity modules can be added to existing Moodle installations • Plug-in language packs allow full localisation to any language. These can be edited using a built-in web-based editor. Currently there are language packs for over 43 languages. • The code is clearly-written PHP under a GPL license - easy to modify to suit your needs

16. Moodle – Learning management system Features • User management • Goals are to reduce admin involvement to a minimum, while retaining high security • Supports a range of authentication mechanisms through plug-in authentication modules, allowing easy integration with existing systems. • Standard email method: students can create their own login accounts. Email addresses are verified by confirmation. • LDAP method: account logins can be checked against an LDAP server. Admin can specify which fields to use. • IMAP, POP3, NNTP: account logins are checked against a mail or news server. SSL, certificates and TLS are supported. • External database: any database containing at least two fields can be used as an external authentication source. • Each person requires only one account for the whole server - each account can have different access • An admin account controls the creation of courses and creates teachers by assigning users to courses

17. Moodle – Learning management system Features • User management • A course creator account is only allowed to create courses and teach in them • Teachers may have editing privileges removed so that they can't modify the course (eg for part-time tutors) • Security - teachers can add an "enrolment key" to their courses to keep out non-students. They can give out this key face-to-face or via personal email etc • Teachers can enrol students manually if desired • Teachers can unenrol students manually if desired, otherwise they are automatically unenrolled after a certain period of inactivity (set by the admin) • Students are encouraged to build an online profile including photos, description. Email addresses can be protected from display if required. • Every user can specify their own timezone, and every date in Moodle is translated to that timezone (eg posting dates, assignment due dates etc) • Every user can choose the language used for the Moodle interface (English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese etc)

18. Moodle – Learning management system Features • Course management • A full teacher has full control over all settings for a course, including restricting other teachers • Choice of course formats such as by week, by topic or a discussion-focussed social format • Flexible array of course activities - Forums, Quizzes, Resources, Choices, Surveys, Assignments, Chats, Workshops • Recent changes to the course since the last login can be displayed on the course home page - helps give sense of community • Most text entry areas (resources, forum postings etc) can be edited using an embedded WYSIWYG HTML editor • All grades for Forums, Quizzes and Assignments can be viewed on one page (and downloaded as a spreadsheet file)

19. Moodle – Learning management system Features • Course management • All grades for Forums, Quizzes and Assignments can be viewed on one page (and downloaded as a spreadsheet file) • Full user logging and tracking - activity reports for each student are available with graphs and details about each module (last access, number of times read) as well as a detailed "story" of each students involvement including postings etc on one page. • Mail integration - copies of forum posts, teacher feedback etc can be mailed in HTML or plain text. • Custom scales - teachers can define their own scales to be used for grading forums and assignments • Courses can be packaged as a single zip file using the Backup function. These can be restored on any Moodle server.

20. Moodle – Learning management system Features Moodle also includes: • Assignment Module • Chat Module • Choice Module • Forum Module • Quiz Module • Resource Module • Survey Module and • Workshop Module CVS for Moodle Developers • CVS is the Concurrent Versioning System, a commonly-used way of managing source code for large software projects. CVS keeps all versions of all files so that nothing is ever lost, and usage by different people is tracked. It also provides ways to merge code if two or more people are working on the same file. All code and all versions are stored on a central server (in the case of Moodle, at Sourceforge).

21. Moodle – Learning management system Requirements • Moodle is primarily developed in Linux using Apache, MySQL and PHP (also sometimes known as the LAMP platform), but is also regularly tested with PostgreSQL and on Windows XP, Mac OS X and Netware 6 operating systems • The requirements for Moodle are as follows: • Web server software. Most people use Apache, but Moodle should work fine under any web server that supports PHP, such as IIS on Windows platforms. • PHP scripting language (version 4.1.0 or later). PHP 5 is supported as of Moodle 1.4. • a working database server: MySQL or PostgreSQL are completely supported and recommended for use with Moodle. • Most web hosts support all of this by default. If you are signed up with one of the few webhosts that does not support these features ask them why, and consider taking your business elsewhere. • If you want to run Moodle on your own computer and all this looks a bit daunting, then please see our guide: Installing Apache, MySQL and PHP. It provides some step-by-step instructions to install all this on most popular platforms.

23. Thank Youffn@citmatel.inf.cuCubaenergia, Cuba