While what Andy is saying disturbs some, I think it will satisfy  
others. This is a difficult issue.

As I see it, the sort of problem we had with earlier models is that  
while one teacher may use a speech by demanding that the students  
learn it off by heart, and does nothing much more with it, another  
teacher asks the students to read it and write what they think would  
be a good speech. These two educational activities are very different  
and both took place, whether or not they are documented. Both teachers  
engaged in an activity that used the speech, so it was a 'learning  
resource'. I would like to see both teachers attributing the same  
metadata to the speech but relating it to very different activities.  
In one case, she might simply report that is was used in a memory- 
exercising lesson while the other might describe the activity in  
detail with pedagogical type tags, outcomes, etc etc. The fact that  
the activity was not documented as such, but only recorded in  
metadata, makes no difference - metadata is data.

I don't know if this is what Andy meant?

Liddy


On 24/12/2009, at 3:20 AM, Andy Powell wrote:

> The basic picture looks fine.
>
> However, an EducationalActivity is an activity (a process?) rather  
> than a document so the properties dcterms:hasFormat and  
> dcterms:isFormatOf don't make sense to me.
>
> I was going to make the same comment about dcterms:publisher but I  
> suppose that an activity can have an "entity responsible for making  
> the [activity] available"??
>
> An EducationalActivity might have some associated documentation, a  
> LessonPlan for example, which would have properties like  
> dcterms:publisher and dcterms:hasFormat/isFormatOf.  Further, the  
> relationship between an EducationalActivity and a LessonPlan could  
> be dcterms:description (though I suspect that there might be some  
> push-back against that kind of use of dcterms:description).
>
> Also, if you are intending 'source' in the diagram to be  
> dcterms:source then I'm not sure that I agree.  I think the  
> relationship between an EducationalActivity and a Resource is more  
> like 'makesUseOf' or 'utilizes'.  I'm not sure that the activity is  
> always directly 'derived from' the resource itself (as would be  
> implied by the use of dcterms:source)?  I'm not sure?
>
> Andy
>
> ________________________________
>
> Andy Powell
> Research Programme Director
> Eduserv
>
> [log in to unmask]
> 01225 474319 / 07989 476710
> www.eduserv.org.uk
> efoundations.typepad.com
> twitter.com/andypowe11
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Stuart Sutton [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: 23 December 2009 13:58
>> To: Andy Powell; [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: RE: DC-Ed Application Profile: Defining resource classes for
>> the AP
>>
>> Andy, would you mind taking a look at the attached skeletal model and
>> tell me whether it somewhat represents what you are saying?  If not,
>> how's it off base? The rdfs:resource node outside the descriptive
>> domain represents everything that is not educational activity.
>>
>> Stuart
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: DCMI Education Community [mailto:[log in to unmask]]  
>> On
>> Behalf Of Andy Powell
>> Sent: Tuesday, December 22, 2009 3:02 AM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: DC-Ed Application Profile: Defining resource classes for
>> the AP
>>
>>> 1) "The DC-Education Application Profile (DC-Ed AP) is intended to
>>> describe a precise category of "things in the world"--those things
>>> that have been deliberately purposed (or re-purposed) for use in the
>>> processes of formal and informal teaching and learning."
>>
>> I agree that this is a good starting definition.
>>
>> I have a slight concern about the wording of 'purposed for use' (and
>> 're-purposed') because that phrase carries connotations of
>> 'modification' (i.e. the resource being changed in order to  
>> facilitate
>> its use in teaching and learning) for me.
>>
>> I wonder why we don't just say 'used' (and 're-used') as follows:
>>
>> 1) "The DC-Education Application Profile (DC-Ed AP) is intended to
>> describe a precise category of "things in the world"--those things  
>> that
>> have been deliberately used (or re-used) in the processes of formal  
>> and
>> informal teaching and learning."
>>
>> ?
>>
>> Given that definition, there is then the question of how best to  
>> model
>> that set of 'things in the world'.
>>
>> Stuart proposes a model in which the set of things in the world of
>> interest to us are assigned a new class of LearningResource.
>>
>> I suggest an alternative, which is that we model the set of things in
>> the world of interest to us as being the set of things of class
>> rdfs:Resource which have an associated EducationalUsage.
>>
>> In short, I don't think Stuart and I disagree (significantly) about  
>> the
>> set of things of interest to this application profile.  We only
>> disagree on how best to model that set of things.
>>
>> Stuart's model is simpler (which is undoubtedly a good thing).
>>
>> My model is more complex.
>>
>> Stuart's model will (presumably) result in the things of interest  
>> being
>> assigned new properties by virtue of them being treated as
>> LearningResources.  (Stuart, is that what you intend?)
>>
>> My model only assigns new properties to things of the class
>> EducationalUsage. (In fact, with my model the application profile
>> essentially becomes one for describing the educational use of
>> resources, not for describing the resources themselves.)
>>
>> I think my model better describes what is actually happening in the
>> world - a resource doesn't suddenly get a new set of properties just
>> because someone decides to use it in a particular way.  However, I  
>> also
>> think the additional complexity is something to be very wary of.
>>
>> (To repeat an earlier point) if we take Jon's example of "a  
>> textbook is
>> always a textbook"... well yes, it is.  But that textbook may have  
>> very
>> different levels of difficulty when used as part of an English
>> literature course than it does when used as part of a library
>> cataloguing course.  In Stuart's 'properties of the LearningResource
>> model', two separate global assertions that the textbook is both  
>> 'very
>> difficult' and 'very easy' (to be somewhat crass about it!) made by  
>> two
>> separate people in two separate contexts will only be able to be
>> unpicked (by software) by some sort of provenance (who said what?)
>> approach which may make Stuart's model much more complex.
>>
>> To sum up... there is more than one way of modelling the world (I  
>> guess
>> we all knew that!).  In this case, I don't know which is the best  
>> model
>> (and, in fact, I'm not even sure I understand how to begin to judge
>> which might be the best model :-( ).
>>
>> Andy
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> Andy Powell
>> Research Programme Director
>> Eduserv
>>
>> [log in to unmask]
>> 01225 474319 / 07989 476710
>> www.eduserv.org.uk
>> efoundations.typepad.com
>> twitter.com/andypowe11
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: DCMI Education Community [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>> On
>>> Behalf Of Flack, Irvin
>>> Sent: 22 December 2009 02:31
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: DC-Ed Application Profile: Defining resource classes  
>>> for
>>> the AP
>>>
>>> Stuart
>>>
>>> I completely agree with what you just said, so I've been
>>> misinterpreting the definitions on the wiki.
>>>
>>> On that point, there seem to actually be three slightly different
>>> definitions at the moment[1]:
>>>
>>> In the Background:
>>>
>>> 1) "The DC-Education Application Profile (DC-Ed AP) is intended to
>>> describe a precise category of "things in the world"--those things
>>> that have been deliberately purposed (or re-purposed) for use in the
>>> processes of formal and informal teaching and learning."
>>>
>>> and
>>>
>>> 2) "The intention is to define the resource class narrowly as
>>> comprised of resources intentionally designed with the purpose of
>>> achieving or measuring definable learning objectives for a  
>>> prescribed
>> audience."
>>>
>>> and in the DC-Ed Resource Classes table:
>>>
>>> 3) "Learning resource: A resource with the intentional purpose of
>>> achieving or measuring one or more defined learning goals."
>>>
>>> The first one best captures my idea of a learning resource, provided
>>> 're-purposed' includes the scenario of my Creative Arts teacher
>>> identifying the utility of the website for her art students. The
>>> second one I like least because of the inclusion of 'design', which
>> to
>>> me is hard to assess.
>>>
>>> Irvin
>>>
>>> [1] http://dublincore.org/educationwiki/Classes
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Stuart Sutton [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>>> Sent: Tuesday, 22 December 2009 12:31 PM
>>> To: Flack, Irvin; [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: RE: DC-Ed Application Profile: Defining resource classes  
>>> for
>>> the AP
>>>
>>> Irwin, I'd only add one thing.  In the end, the DC-Ed AP is about
>>> resource _description_ for a particular domain--that is what we are
>>> trying to enable.  So, I would say that once your Creative Arts
>>> teacher identifies the resource's utility in secondary arts student
>>> learning we have a learning resource and once you get to describing
>>> it, your description is of that resource as a learning resource.
>>> Barring education domain knowledge of your own or your creative arts
>>> teacher friend's input, you'd have describe that resource as  
>>> whatever
>>> you deem it to be natively.  That's why I continue to assert that  
>>> you
>>> are describing that resource as a learning resource and not as some
>>> other class of thing encompassed by rdfs:Resource--i.e., anything
>>> whatsoever we can think of and describe. Out of that totally
>>> encompassing universe, you and your creative arts teacher friend  
>>> have
>>> carved out something specialized--an instance of the class learning
>>> resource.
>>>
>>> Stuart
>>>
>>>
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