METADATA FOR THE LEARNING OBJECTS THAT CONTAIN CULTURAL OBJECTS

Abstract

Standardised metadata for the development and storage of learning objects that draw on cultural content have not been provided as yet. There are well established standards for documenting learning objects, such as the IEEE/LOM and the LRE/LOM, and for documenting cultural content, such as the CIDOC-CRM and the SPECTRUM. However, these standards do not provide for standardised metadata of learning objects that exploit cultural objects and enable descriptions of the type Alpha is a learning object made by X and contains a digital image of Joconda made by DaVinci; nor do they provide for a solid framework for DBs that could answer to questions such as “Provide me with learning objects supporting Geography lessons about Greece that are addressed to 14-year olds and contain pictures by one of Papaloukas, Vassileiou, Tsarouhis” or “Provide me with either learning objects or digital pictures of pieces of art on harvesting wheat”. Furthermore, existing large repositories of digital objects have not been designed for such hybrid objects. Thus, EUROPEANA contains only cultural content while the LRE and the Greek Φωτόδεντρο only learning objects. In the overall, it is clear that if education at a European level is meant to profit from cultural objects and cultural object repositories according to EU plans (Eurydiki 2009), the process of developing and storing learning objects that contain cultural content should be strengthened with standardised documentation and storage tools. We report here on the development of an ontology that is the unification of LRE/LOM (the standard for learning objects) and CIDOC-CRM (the standard for cultural objects). We also report on the development of a database that conforms to the unification of LRE and CIDOC ontologies.