In this programme we have identified many different and coherent actions to reach our goal. The programme is now in progress, it just started and will continue at least until November 2004.

The programme is a joint initiative of Kennisnet and ICT op School (www.ictopschool.net). We work together with the government wide programme called OSSOS, the Programme for Open Standards and Open Source Software in Government.

Riina: I understand that your website gives information about open source software in educational usage, do you also have some concrete actions to show?

Paul: We are starting a project at the moment which has the goal to see what problems one encounters when a project is released to the open source community.

We also would like to make "OSS in het onderwijs" a webspace where the whole of Dutch education community comes and discusses open source and open standards. So the website is for the novices and experts. We are not there yet, but we hope to be in a few months.

Kennisnet also wants to put in practice what we preach: we are building our website on an open source platform using MMBase. It is widely in use in the Netherlands, and the community has a substantial amount of developers. We chose MMBase because of the flexibility.


René Montenarie is working on the metadata project with aims to use the educational web-based content between vocational schools. Kennisnet acts as a coordinator of this project that brings together many actors (educational organisations, standard bodies, publishers, experts and universities) in the Dutch educational field. The aim is to build an application profile that matches the needs of the vocational schools and the international lessons learned.

Riina: How would you define your mission in metadata?

René: BVE (beroeps-en volwassen educatie) directly translates as professional and adult education. In this sector, we are about to start the definition of an application profile. Besides the relevant steps in defining an application profile, the focus is very much on getting commitment of all the relevant organisations, such as publishers/content providers, schools, etc. to make sure the application profile will be accepted as a standard and will actually be used. Therefore, we also involved the Dutch Standardisation Committee for Learning Technologies and we are looking at the experiences within European Schoolnet with the definition of their Celebrate application profile.

Riina: What is the timeline of this work?

René: From November 2003 till April 2004 when we expect to have the first version of our application profile.

Riina: Is there a link between two of these initiatives?

René: Yes, we are currently looking into the possibilities of developing a test environment or proof of concept. This research aims to find open source tools (LMS or LCMS) which enables us to show the advantages of using an application profile for metadata

Riina: Is there a place to see more about the metadata initiative?

René: Our reports and website are at http://metadata.kennisnet.nl, but only in Dutch.

Riina: Thank you!

Kennisnet
http://www.kennisnet.nl

OSS in het onderwijs
http://www.ossinhetonderwijs.nl

OSSOS, Open Standards and Open Source Software in Government
in English http://www.ososs.nl/index.jsp?alias=english

ICT op School
www.ictopschool.net/About_us

MMBase
http://www.mmbase.org

Dutch Standardisation Committee for Learning Technologies
http://www.nen.nl/nl/act/spec/leertech/

Dutch metadata initiative website
http://metadata.kennisnet.nl