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Hi Fred and others, The Learning Registry (http://www.learningregistry.org/ )is a US initiative trying to improve the underlying infrastructure around access to resources. It has been described as "social networking for metadata". Those directly involved may want to comment further but my brief summary of it would be: As part of the wider Federal investment in education, the US Department of Education and Department of Defence (along with other partners) is specifying and creating a technical infrastructure to support better discovery and sharing of educational resources/ learning materials. The Learning Registry seeks to address this problem of "an abundance of resources [which are] difficult to find & use." The LR is not intended to be a "super-repository" but rather a lightweight way of bringing together... "Data about the collection, about storage and usage, and looking at what users do with the data, and the various kinds of descriptive data (Tagging, commenting, etc.) Data's out there: log data, user data, but no central place to store or exchange or aggregate that. This is the core functionality of the learning reg." A key focus is to allow distributed informal interactions and commentary to be associated with content and to use that to enhance content and access to it. The LR is not a place to go and get stuff, rather an infrastructure for resource providers, tool creators, and resource users to share a two way exchange of information about resources and their use. There are four key features about the LR that should be noted: * It is intended as an underlying infrastructure not a destination site or gateway * It will use a replicating node based approach not a central hub * It is intended to sharing data about use of resources not just about resources * Its scope covers commercial content and open content A few technical features: * the NSDL have developed a schema for paradata to describe and share user interaction with content. https://nsdlnetwork.org/stemexchange/paradata * the project is using CouchDB - as Dan puts it - "(a NoSQL document-oriented database with RESTful JSON APIs, native JavaScript code execution, MapReduce support, and distributed data replication)." More detail and a tech spec is available through their site and Dan Rehak wrote a guest blog post about the LR for CETIS which has more context and detail and is available here: http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/othervoices/2011/03/22/thelearningregistry/ They're a plugfest/ codebash this week which Pat is attending. Hope this helps, John R. John Robertson skype: rjohnrobertson Research Fellow/ Open Education Resources programme support officer (JISC CETIS), Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement University of Strathclyde Tel: +44 (0) 141 548 3072 http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/johnr/ The University of Strathclyde is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC015263 -----Original Message----- From: Open Educational Resources [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Fred Riley Sent: 14 June 2011 10:23 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Learning Reg question > I get it, but maybe it's a bit too cryptic for someone who doesn't > understand LR. Quite. I'm not even sure what Learning Reg is. A student called Reginald? ;) I've a feeling that I've missed a previous discussion which would have set the context for this. Was there one which I can refer back to in the list archives? Fred ---- This email represents my own personal views and is not at all reflective of policy or opinions at my institution. So there. ---- This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee and may contain confidential information. If you have received this message in error, please send it back to me, and immediately delete it. Please do not use, copy or disclose the information contained in this message or in any attachment. Any views or opinions expressed by the author of this email do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nottingham. This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment may still contain software viruses which could damage your computer system: you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.