SELF Platform—A Teacher-Centric Collaborative Authoring System

I am glad to share that an article on SELF Platform has been published in the Journal of Applied Collaborative Systems.

Meena Kharatmal & Nagarjuna G. (2009).  SELF Platform—A Teacher-Centric  Collaborative  Authoring System. Journal of Applied Collaborative Systems, 1(2), pp. 67-82.

The full article can be downloaded from the journals website or from the publications page of my blog.

SELF-Platform—A Teacher-Centric Collaborative Authoring System

HBCSE – Gnowledge Lab has developed the SELF Platform as part of the European Commission funded SELF Project # 034595 (2006-2008). A paper on SELF Platform as a teacher centric collaborative authoring system has been published at the NCOSS conference organized by CDAC, Kharghar, Navi Mumbai, May 2009.

The SELF Platform caters to a teacher to create learning materials.

The full paper is available from the publications page of my blog.

FKFT pre-conference SELF workshop, Barcelona Spain

The SELF consortium has organized a one day SELF workshop as part of the FKFT pre-conference. We are at the Universitat de Oberta Catalunya. The participants are getting hands-on sessions on creating, organizing, editing courses using the SELF Platform and Gnowledge Portal.

Workshop on collaborative building of online e-learning courses @ HBCSE

——————————————————————————————
Announcing a workshop on
“Collaborative building of online e-learning courses”

June 25, 26, 27, 2008
Gnowledge Lab, HBCSE
——————————————————————————————

The Gnowledge Lab (computer lab) of HBCSE has developed a
web-based e-learning platform for creating courses. The platform is
mainly focused on authors, content generators, translators,
instructors who wants to create course materials for dissemination of
knowledge. A glimpse of a few prototype course materials that are
being developed can be viewed from http://courses.gnowledge.org/collectionview/
The Gnowledge Lab is pleased to announce a workshop on Collaborative
building of online e-learning courses using SELF Platform, in all
languages particularly in english, marathi, or hindi.

We invite all of the staff members from HBCSE—academic, scientific,
research scholars, project, administration, technical—to participate
in this workshop.

Features of the workshop:

* Creating on-line courses in any subject using any language
* Adding & organizing lessons, glossary, faqs, test questions
* Creating personal bookshelf
* Inserting images using filemanager
* Exchanging course materials using import and export modules
* Creating versions of courses and comparing changes
* Using electronic conference room for online collaboration of courses
* The participants who will be developing content will be credited as
authors of courses automatically by the system
* The content developed will be published under GNU-FDL licence
(same as wikipedia license)

Our team will provide a demonstration on using the SELF Platform. A
training on how to type in Indian languages and publish on the
Internet will also be provided as part of the workshop.

Registration:

Interested participants can register for the workshop by sending an
email to —– self [at] hbcse.tifr.res.in —— before 20th June. The
number of participants is limited upto about 10 participants on each
day. The same workshop will be repeated on each day. So please specify
the date on which you would like to join the workshop in your email
registration. After the one day workshop you can continue to build the
courses from anywhere and collaborate using the electronic conference
room.

Venue: Gnowledge Lab ( Computer Lab – 108 )

Timings: 10:00 to 17:00

Tentative Schedule:

10:00 – 10:30 Introduction to the Gnowledge Portal & SELF Platform

10:30 – 10: 45 Quick demonstration on building on-line courses

10:45 — 11:00 Tea break (Tea and Snacks will be provided)

11:00 — 13:00 Hands-on session on building courses

13:00 — 14:00 Lunch break

14:00 — 16:00 Hands-on session on building courses

16:00 — 16:15 Tea break (Tea and Snacks will be provided)

16:15 – 17:00 Discussion on courses & Feedback

All are welcome ! Please register through —– self [at] hbcse.tifr.res.in —— for the workshop.

SELF Team & Gnowledge Team
HBCSE

—————————————–
BE SELFish
Share your Knowledge
—————————————–

SELF Platform Development Report

The SELF Platform team has produced an interim report on the “SELF Platform Development: Localised and Tested System”. As part of the guidelines of the SELF Project, the report has been submitted to the European Commission on April 30, 2008. The interim report on deliverable D6 describes main features based on the SELF Platform in the three phases with regard to its implementation following the human interface design. The report has a developer, users guide alongwith the details of the technical specifications related to the server infrastructure, its setup and maintenence. The report also mentions the roadmap and development methodology. Most of the features are supported with screen shots from the SELF Platform.

FKFT Conference

SELF Project is organizing an international conference on “Free Knowledge, Free Technology: Education for a Free Information Society” in Barcelona, Spain from July 15-17, 2008. For detailed information about the conference please visit http://fkft.eu.

Participation is also open for “Open Documentary Contest”. Please visit here for more information.

in sofia, bulgaria

I am in Sofia, Bulgaria to participate in the SELF Board meeting from 5-15 Feb 2008. The weather is very cold. It may range from -5 to 5 deg celcius. This is my first time to experience such freezing cold. Well I am also equipped with lotsa warm clothings and our host has also given me extra clothings. shall upload the pics of my trip here. but this is me in front of the hotel.

and this is just a glimpse of one of the streets near the hotel in sofia

School Science Education – Universalisation with Quality

This is one of the sessions organized in a National Conference on Science Education-Challenges of Quality being organised in HBCSE on account of Prof. B. M. Udgaonkar’s 80th birthday.

The speakers of this session: Prof. Anil Sadgopal (Chair), Prof. Ram Takwale, Dr. Anita Ramphal, Dr. Jayashree Ramadas, Dr. Gambhir and Dr. Subramaniam.

Prof. Ram Takawale talked about the issues of Open Educational Resources, distance and open universities, school science education, universalization and quality school science education for all, how to achieve universalization of education. As we know, information and knowledge society is emerging, and therefore ICT can play an important role in solving the problems of making quality of science education universal. In today’s world, we are connected with mobile phone, TV,internet, but not all the schools are connected, in this situation how can we create a connected world. ICT is using different processes such as digitization, personalization, customization and can we use these new processes to universalize science education.

According to Prof. Takwale, we cannot use the conventional processes to solve the problems of universalization, and we need to use ICT to solve such problems. The keypoint is that ICT enables for mass collaboration wherein few people come together for a common cause and create resources for everyone for example wikipedia. He showed interest in creating learning groups or learning communities for the open educational program.

Well, I would like to add here that the SELF Project is also an example of such open educational resources. The SELF Platform is being used to create courses and learning materials. It aims to be a community-driven platform for producing and distributing educational materials.

The next speaker, Dr. Anita Ramphal dealt with the formulation of NCERT syllabus. She showed concerns to bridge the inequality in school education. Some other issues that were touched upon were the language of science used in the textbooks, sometimes due to this the people are distancing from science. The language of science has to be explicit, visual representations are important.

Jayashree Ramadas talked about the Homi Bhaba Curriculum, Dr.  Subramaniam talked about research in mathematics education, Dr. Gambhir talked about science experiments in schools.

SELF Launch News in Media

SELF Launch got a good coverage in Media. There were reporters from Loksatta, DNA, and TV News Channel from DD News. The images are the clippings from the articles.

 Article from DNA

 Article from Indian Express

Article from Loksatta

SELF Platform Launch

HBCSE is launching the SELF Platform on Sept. 7, 2007.

Announcing Official Launch of
SELF Platform @ www.selfplatform.eu
On September 7, 2007 (3-6 pm)
at Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (TIFR).

Schedule :

3:00 – 3:30 Welcome Address
Prof. Arvind Kumar
Centre Director
Homi Bhabha Centre For Science Education

3:30 – 4:00 SELF Platform Launch
Prof. Shobo Bhattacharya
Director
Tata Institute Of Fundamental Research

4:00 – 4:30 Keynote Address on FOSS & Collaborative Culture
Prof. D. B. Phatak
Subharao M. Nilekani Chair Professor
Kanwal Rekhi Institute of Information Technology
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
4:30 – 5:00 Special lecture on Semantic Web and Collaborative E-learning
Prof. G. Sivakumar
Professor and Head, Computer Science and Engineering Department
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

5:00 -5:30 Live Demonstration of the SELF Platform
SELF Platform Development Team
Homi Bhabha Centre For Science Education

5:30 – 6:00 Vote of Thanks & High Tea

Venue:

Shri V. G. Kulkarni Auditorium
Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education
V. N. Purav Marg, Mankhurd, Mumbai 88

RSVP:
self@hbcse.tifr.res.in
hbcse@selfproject.eu
25555242/25554712
The SELF Platform will be officially launched on Sept 5, 2007 by all the seven partners simultaneously in their own countries—The Netherlands, Spain, Bulgaria, Sweden, Argentina.