JISCMail List for ELOGeo

A mailing list has been made for the project under JISCMail system. This will also help us to make the online community of the project collaborators and users. Messages emailed to elogeo@jiscmail.ac.uk will then be delivered to the list members. To subscribe in this list, please follow the "subscribe" link on http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/elogeo

Social Media and Jorum

For the ELOGeo project, the final product will be a website (that can ideally be any kind of social media) where people can share, find and discuss about the learning materials and after the project deadline the geospatial community with minimal management can continue to update and reuse the shared materials. So in addition to developing a limited number of courses (for the top requested ones, according to the survey we have recently done) the project aim is also to establish community involvement to share/update/reuse other's learning materials under CC license for the long term sustainability.

For the website framework, I was looking at making wiki-type media but I am not sure what could be the best option and what reusable codes can be used to make our website. I recently came across JISC-funded Jorum http://www.jorum.ac.uk/   I understand EDINA and MIMAS (who are also our project partners) jointly run Jorum.Today also Suchith and I had a teleconference with Nicola Osborne, the social media officer of EDINA and she also had guided us on how to make social web for ELOGeo, particularly in using Jurum. She may be also able to "flag up" each uploaded course to the community.

Jorum design seems to me a good option for reuse tailored for ELOGeo needs.  It enables the users to share, learn, find and discuss about the courses. ELOGeo framework will be a cut-down version of this because there will be no university authentications (open to all)  and the subject area will be only focused on  Geospatial domain.

On the other hand Kamie encouraged me to use JISCMail as the email list and announcement management. I have requested an count for ELOGeo on JISCMail and that is now ready. I will send an invitation to subscribe in that email list to the people who have already expressed their interest. I also realized that JISCMail is not only a mail tool, but lots of other community activities are included, like file sharing, online meetings etc.

I think finally that I should have been briefed about what infrastructures JISC can provide to us.

Amir.

Which Framework?

Me and Suchith and Kamie had a teleconference today and I think one of the main issues now is to work on the "framework". By Framework we mean a set of templates, guidelines and web tools that the community of users can create, read and edit the available course materials. This will be very important for the sustainability of the project. In general, Wiki is a good idea to follow, but there may be some other similar solutions.

We welcome any ideas about how to implement such a framework to fit our purpose. 

Survey Results

The summary of the user's requirement survey can be found here.