collaborative content submission

[Tom Hoffman]

On 9/30/05, Ryan Michael <kerinin at gmail.com> wrote:

<long snip about collaborative content creation />

>  here's what i would think could be improved:
>  -robust tagging and metadata for indexing/searching

This is a big hairy issue which I've spent a lot of time on
personally.  It is definitely a sufficiently complex problem that
using semantic web technologies (RDF, OWL, etc) would have a big
payoff down the road.

>  -revisioning and forking

Mark Shuttleworth is funding a lot of work on distributed revision
control as part of the underlying Ubuntu/LaunchPad infrastructure.  I
think it is likely that when the dust settles on that, a couple years
down the road, we'll be able to take a serious look at applying that
software to educational content creation.

Ultimately, that is the right model.  I, as a teacher, download some
content, create a branch, tweak it to fit my needs, and then offer my
changes back to the community, either as a separate branch or perhaps
merged into the "main distribution."

>  -integration with a scheduling program (perhaps organized by class)
>  -semester/year-long course timelines linking to any materials used
> (syllabus, handouts, wikibooks, quizzes/tests, homework, etc)

This stuff is known generically (in the US) as "curriculum mapping." 
I would like to see SchoolTool eventually (SchoolTool 2007 or 2008)
support curriculum mapping, although the curriculum itself would not
necessarily be handled by SchoolTool.  Which gets you into the welter
of interoperability standards.  Perhaps this is a job for IMS Learning
Design?  I'm not sure.

Actually, the best existing project IMHO for this kind of thing is the
Connexions project at Rice University:  http://cnx.rice.edu/

--Tom