The cathedral and the bazaar of e-repository development: encouraging community engagement with moving pictures and sound

This paper offers an insight into the development, use and governance of e‐repositories for learning and teaching, illustrated by Eric Raymond's bazaar and cathedral analogies and by a comparison of collection strategies that focus on content coverage or on the needs of users. It addresses in particular the processes that encourage and achieve community engagement. This insight is illustrated by one particular e‐repository, the Education Media On‐Line (EMOL) service. This paper draws analogies between the bazaar approach for open source software development and its possibilities for developing e‐repositories for learning and teaching. It suggests in particular that the development, use and evaluation of online moving pictures and sound objects for learning and teaching can benefit greatly from the community engagement lessons provided by the development, use and evaluation of open source software. Such lessons can be underpinned by experience in the area of learning resource collections, where repositories have been classified as ‘collections‐based’ or ‘user‐based’. Lessons from the open source movement may inform the development of e‐repositories such as EMOL in the future

Second Life: the seventh face of the library?

Viewpoint/Discussion Paper Purpose This paper gives a brief introduction to Second Life, an outline of how one academic librarian has got involved with using it and reviews the issues that have arisen from a library perspective. Approach It offers a reflection on whether library activities in Second Life are different to library services in the real world and suggests that Second Life is just another ‘face’ of the library. Findings Second Life is still in the very early stages of development. There are various barriers and challenges to overcome before it can be used widely within universities. However, this paper shows it does provide an opportunity to experiment and explore what information resources are required in this environment and how librarianship and librarians need to evolve to cater for users in a three dimensional world. Originality/value This paper is based on personal experience and offers as many questions as answers

Foster Parent Knowledge and the Need for Information - Sharing Technology

In 2023, the United States child welfare system suffers from disorganization, role ambiguity, and deficient transparency. With 12 contempt of court strikes for the system’s Director in 2022, it is clear why child welfare actors are unable to successfully perform. Foster parents, a key stakeholder in the proper care of children, report being unable to successfully perform because they are raising children with significant needs and trauma while having to locate and navigate child welfare system laws, policies, and procedures on their own. The purpose of this research project was to 1 ) identify whether foster parents know who is accountable for their foster child’s mental and physical health, legal case, medical care, and finances, 2) identify if foster parents know how to directly contact this party, 3) identify additional knowledge foster parents need about the system or their foster child, 4) connect with the Illinois foster parent community encouraging participant empowerment and self-efficacy, 5) work as a community identifying oppressive constructs that hinder information-sharing between the Illinois foster care system and foster parents, and 6) construct and implement a sustainable information-sharing, crowd-sourced platform for foster parents and other child welfare professionals to access information. The data for this project was collected using a quantitative and qualitative survey and 2 focus group sessions. The findings show that foster parents need additional information about the foster care system and their foster child, specifically medical information, indicating that a platform for foster parents, case workers, and other child welfare stakeholders, is critical

Cognitive load and knowledge sharing in Learning Networks

Learning Networks are online social networks designed to support non-formal learning; they are therefore particularly suitable for self-directed learners. In Learning Networks, learners need to acquire knowledge through knowledge sharing with other participants. However, without a support structure, learners have to organize knowledge sharing themselves and this could induce extraneous cognitive load. When working on complex learning tasks, this organizing process could have a detrimental effect on knowledge acquisition. To optimize cognitive load, we propose to use a particular type of collaborative learning, peer tutoring, as a support structure. Its mechanisms reduce, we argue, the extraneous load imposed by organizing knowledge sharing as well as induce germane load by directing the freed cognitive capacity to processes that contribute to knowledge acquisition

Semantic Web meets Web 2.0 (and vice versa): The Value of the Mundane for the Semantic Web

Web 2.0, not the Semantic Web, has become the face of “the next generation Web” among the tech-literate set, and even among many in the various research communities involved in the Web. Perceptions in these communities of what the Semantic Web is (and who is involved in it) are often misinformed if not misguided. In this paper we identify opportunities for Semantic Web activities to connect with the Web 2.0 community; we explore why this connection is of significant benefit to both groups, and identify how these connections open valuable research opportunities “in the real” for the Semantic Web effort

Islamic Economy thru Online Community Implementing Information Retrieval Capabilities

Knowledge Management has become more of a concern by the community around the world. Communities are more aware and concern of the sharing and transfer the knowledge. The rapid development of Web technology has made the World Wide Web an important and popular application platform for disseminating and searching for information as well as conducting business. As a huge information source, World Wide Web has allowed unprecedented sharing of ideas and information on a scale never seen before. The use of the Web and its exponential growth are now well known, and they are causing a revolution in the way people use computers and perform daily tasks. Islamic Economy thru Online Community - Implementing Information Retrieval Capabilities is discussed more advanced way by using the technology to motivate and encourage community to the knowledge sharing and transfer. The purpose of the web is to develop a platform that community can improve the economic growth and make their knowledge more effectively and facilitating circulation of community knowledge and collects community members' opinions as well. The target users of this website are consumers and business person. In developing the project, the methodology comprises of system conceptualization, system analysis, system design, system development and lastly system testing. The tools used are Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004, Joomla Open Source, APACHE Web Server and mySQL. The website focuses on the economic growth for consumer and business person, so that community can make a right decision in such situation. It allows users to search the needed information on the specific area and allows users to store their information as well, so that the community can share their knowledge and experience with others

ECO D2.6 Web 2.0 requirements analysis

ECO sMOOCs are social and seamless and the pedagogical design puts the learner central, taking an active role and learning through interactions and connections with others. The platforms have to provide the features not only support social interaction but promote and enhance these. This deliverable puts forward what features can scaffold interactions, taking into account lessons learned from popular social media.Part of the work carried out has been funded with support from the European Commission, under the ICT Policy Support Programme, as part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) in the ECO project under grant agreement n° 21127