Introduction Audience Motivation Methodology Architectural Decisions Selection of Components to use Implementation of the Repository Deliverable Overview WP4-1-1 Operational Handbook WP4-1-2 Content Repository 2D text document repository 3D content repository in Second Life 2D an 3D subversion (SVN) repository WP4-1-3 Open Source Web Portal WP4-1-4 Operations and Maintenance

 

 

Introduction

 

This creation of the repository for 2D and 3D objects is closely linked to the other deliverables in work-package 4 of the AVALON project and shares some components with other deliverables in this work-package. This work-package constitutes the operational infrastructure which is used in the execution of action learning events (as defined in WP2 and executed in WP3).

 

Audience

 

The special focus of this deliverable, different to other deliverables in this work-package, is to serve IT system administrators who would have to run such an infrastructure. Thus the intended audience of this deliverables are IT system administrators.

 

Motivation

 

The motivation for this work-package is to establish an infrastructure which serves educators facilitating formal classes in a 3D environment. Of course, one could use the social features of a 3D environment to conduct informal education without any additional components. However, to support a more formal and structured educational approach, as well as improving efficiency and the economic productivity of the used 3D environment, we will introduce the use of additional infrastructure components that can be integrated into the action learning experience.

 

Improving efficiency and the economic productivity:

It is possible to operate a 3D environment with the functionality offered by that environment, however, limiting the educational experience to this functionality has several drawbacks:

 

• The setup time to prepare for a class is completely manual?? and therefore labor intensive. As educators are a scare resource, the setup of an 3D environment needs to provide some automation usually not provided by the 3D environment;

 

• We assume, that in most cases the use of an 3D environment will be one of the media used to deliver the educational experience, but not the only one. By adding e.g. streaming media or assigning e.g. offline tasks other systems need to be integrated – at least to consistently track the participant's identity and authentication.

 

Support a more formal and structured educational approach:

Once an action learning event has started, structured content can be provided during the event and new information can be collected produced through the participant's interaction. Hence there is the need for:

 

• A system providing structured content in a managed way during the action learning event; and

 

• A system capturing, storing and, ideally, assisting by assessing the captured information.

 

By the nature of a 3D environment the information and content can have very different forms and can be more varied than that used in other media. E.g. the managed provision of 3D content is a speciality to 3D environments, lacking in other systems. We will see, that this has consequences in the system architecture used in this deliverable.

 

 

Methodology

 

The methodology used in this deliverable is based on the “Rational Unified Process” and the IBM Global Service Method. Similar methodologies but different names are used by different software engineering vendors, with similar results. As the “Rational Unified Process” is widely used in the academic and commercial software engineering domain, we will use the relevant naming and structuring without an additional reference.

 

 

Architectural Decisions

 

 

Selection of Components to use

 

In respect of already existing and established system components we have selected those relevant by the following criteria:

 

• already known in the community of educators (preferable);

• available on basis of an open source licence (preferable);
  

• K.O.?? criteria is a continued support / an active supporting community is existing;

• K.O. criteria is the provision of open standards and interfaces;

• K.O. criteria is the availability at reasonable cost in respect to the defined AVALON budget.

 

Only the gaps without existing components meeting the above criteria have been addressed with open source patches or other solutions.

 

Implementation of the Repository

 

During the execution of the AVALON project it became obvious that there are different kinds of content, which need to be treated differently because they address different audiences. The assumed available skills of these audiences make it necessary to put the distribute the repository about different components??:

 

Contents	Audience	Skills Requirements	Repository Component
The written reports and documentation produced by the AVALON project	Wider public	Easy and convenient accessability, collaboration support, human readable	pbworks.com was chosen, because its wiki-style supports efficient collaboration and therefore is time-saving. Its contents are accessible both through the official project pages as well as a snapshot copy (taken when??) put into the SVN?? long term archive.
Live 3D learning content	Educators, Content Creators and Students	Immediately usable during live class-room action	secondlife.com was chosen because the community involved was already using it (see also WP4-4). Learning Content when exported to an XML format is placed into the SVN for long term archive.
2D and 3D learning content	IT Administratiors	Recreation of learning content in different environments; long term archive	The SVN (unfuddle.com) was chosen as an open repository access protocol. It can be easyly accessed / moved / transcoded and is well known by IT professionals.
Live community content, e.g. event announcements, discussions, etc. typically content which loose relevance after a certain time e.g. after the event is over	Project members, associated partners, educators, researcher	Easy and convenient accessability, time-saving, human readable	ning.com was chosen, because many community members were already active in that system. Because of the dynamic nature of the content, these are not systematically exported to the SVN, but remain online available on ning.com
Live 2D learning content	Educators, Content Creators and Students	Immediately usable during live classroom action	moodle.org was chosen, because it was already known by most educators involved (see also WP4-4). Learning Content were exported using SCORM format to be placed into the SVN for long term storage

 

 

Deliverable Overview

 

This is the translation of the deliverable-description as provided in the AVALON proposal (included on the first page of this document) and the reference to the place where one can find the related component.

 

 

Component	Description	Reference
WP4-1-1	Operational Handbook	AVALON-WP4-1-operational-handbook.doc
WP4-1-2	Content Repository	2D text document repository avalonlearning.pbworks.com 3D content repository in Second Life 2D an 3D SVN repository avalon.unfuddle.com user: guest password: guest not part of the repository, but available content: live community contents avalon-project.ning.com  some live learning contents in the  LMS
WP4-1-3	Web Portal	part of the official project pages
WP4-1-4	Operations and maintenance	n / a

 

If any of the above urls cannot be accessed after the end of the project, please refer to http://avalonlearning.eu or contact klaus@talkademy.org

 

The key idea is, that if one of the other services (pbworks.com, secondlife.com, ...) are discontinued for some reason, the contents can still be retrieved from the SVN or a similar service.

 

 

WP4-1-1 Operational Handbook

 

This is a living document during the project, see AVALON-WP4-1-operational-handbook.doc

 

 

WP4-1-2 Content Repository

 

 

2D text document repository

 

The text document repository is found in avalonlearning.pbworks.com. It is a wiki and consists of all historic versions of all text documents created by the AVALON project, including all working versions and comments.

 

Its main results, the reports and documentation marked as AVALON project deliverables are made accessible trough the official project pages; see also WP 4-1-1 below.

 

A long term archive version is extracted and put into the SVN repository (see chapter below)

 

3D content repository in Second Life

 

"Ready to use" content can be found in Second Life, accessible without cost

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/AVALON%20LEARNING/12/206/77 .

 

As this place is populated by an active community, its creation is similar to the ning.com community, content is changing and updating, but is available to a wider audience. The 3D content created by the AVALON will be maintained to be accessible to a wider public under an open source licence there. The content can be retrieved by a simple vending machine placed at the url above for immediate use.

 

Learning content, created by the AVALON projects have also been exported to the SVN repository (see next chapter), as a long term archive and to be available for migration to other platforms (e.g. opensimulator.org)

 

2D an 3D subversion (SVN) repository

 

Access to the SVN repository

This is actually an instance of a subversion repository (“SVN”), a standard tool to manage documents and files provided in different formats by different authors. It is a file based system allowing the management of all kind of content. Access code for read-only user is http://avalon.unfuddle.com user: guest password: guest. For users wanting to contribute, please send an email to klaus@talkademy.org

Besides the web-based access to the repository, for checkout / checkin use

svn checkout https://avalon.unfuddle.com/svn/avalon_repository/ local_directory_name 

 

The access to the content is possible using a web-interface and about the SVN protocol for specialised clients, abailable on all platforms??

 

Repository contents and functionality

Different to a Learning Content Management System (“LMS”, see next chapter) the repository does not have a pre-defined metadata structure, thus it is more flexible. The SVN also adresses the functionality expected by IT professionals rather than educators (as an LMS does). It also includes the 3D learning content from Second Life which was produced by the AVALON project, which do not "fit into" the LMS structure.

 

The content is:

 

• a long term archive version of the pbworks wiki (see 2D text document repository above); 
  

• 3D content which has been captured and exported from the 3D environment in XML format (see 3D content repository in Second Life above);
  

• Textures, Scripts, Sounds, Animations, assigned to 3D content used to create 3D content;
  

• 2D learning content in SCORM format as used in the LMS;
  

• Source code patches;

• Some other files from the deliverables produced in the AVALON project.
  

 

This SVN system provides the functionality to:

 

• Move 3D content to different places in 3D environments (also see “3D content publishing process”);

• Guarantee, that content used in the AVALON project stays available after the end of the funding;

• Provide an long term maintained archive once parts of the AVALON system may be offline;

• Helps the people involved in implementing to collaborate more efficiently.

 

Commented Repository Content Excerpt

• “AVALON-WP4-2D_3D_content_publishing_component.doc”, includes an Appendix with commented 3D object metadata, as checked in to the SVN repository.

 

Long term archive

The SVN system will be maintained by talkademy.org beyond the end of the AVALON funded project.

 

If any of the above urls cannot be accessed after the end of the project, please refer to http://avalonlearning.eu or contact klaus@talkademy.org   The idea is, that if one of the other services (pbworks.com, secondlife.com) are discuntinued for some reason, the contents can still be retrieved from the SVN or a similar service.

 

 

WP4-1-3 Open Source Web Portal

 

The Open Source Web Portal is part of the official web-site of the AVALON project, http://avalonlearning.eu

 

The purpose of the open source portal is to make all the content, which is published under an open source license, accessible to a wider public. It is basically a structured directory which links to the places in the repository where the contents can be retrieved.

 

 

WP4-1-4 Operations and Maintenance

 

The efforts taken out to establish, fill and maintain the repository are concluded here. Obviously there is no formal deliverable but the documentation, which is included in WP4-1-1 the operational handbook. WP4-1-4 serves mainly as a token for responsibility to take care of keeping the repository up and running.