The eTerinty project was kicked of in Brussels 16th of January. These participants contributed to a very successful meeting, - from left behind: Christian Stracke (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany), Øystein Johannessen (QIN, Norway), Ingo Dahn (University Koblenz-Landau, Germany), Erlend Øverby (Karde as, Norway / ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC36), Fernando Garcia (AENOR, Spain), Markus Gylling (International Digital Publishing Forum), Annette Grande (Centre for ICT in Education, Norway), Vincent de Jong (Dedicon, Netherlands), Daniel Weck (Daisy Consortium), Gérard Vidal (ENS - Lyon, France). In front from the left: Owen White (Pearson), Chrispin Weston (SALTIS, UK), Phil Baker (CETIS, UK), Sandra Feliciano (ESTGF, Portugal), Jan M. Pawlowski (University of Jyväskylä, Finland/ CEN WS-LT), Enrico Turrin (Federation of European Publishers, Belgium), Rosa Maria Gómes de Regil (CNED, France) and Liina Munari (European Commission, DG Connect, Luxembourg).

Mark Häkkinen and Isaac Bejar (ETS, USA), Lorna Campbell (CETIS, UK), and Daniel Dahrendorf (IMC, Germany) were participating online in the meeting. Tore Hoel (HiOA, Norway /CEN WS-LT) was behind the camera.

Some notes from the the eTernity kickoff

2. Introduction to the topic from CEN WS-LT chair Jan M. Pawlowski (PDF of presentation below)
Some initial requirements:

• Learning activities
• Multimedia / interactivity
• Adaptation / re-authoring / re-mixing
• (Re-)combination
• Assessments / tracking
• Collaboration
• Annotations
• ...

Issues to achieve during initial meeting:
1. Working towards a European position

• Mapped and related requirements gathering for education & publishing
• Position statement
• Contribution towards relevant global workgroups

2. Action plan

• Meeting schedule
• Liaisons / collaborations
• (Common) working groups
• Proposal for CEN WS-LT (meeting 17 Jan 2013 Brussels)
• Project liaisons

3. IDPF/Epub3 introduction by Markus Gylling (PDF of presentation below)
Main issues of discussion:

• Re-mixing is allowed and possible
• How to allow personalization / adaptability which is not part of the standard
• European publishers strongly supporting EPUB3
• Examples of integration of EPUB3 and IMS LTI

4. OER and etextbooks - by Phil Baker, CETIS (PDF of presentation below)
Main Issues of the discussion

• Teachers interest for OER formats: powerpoint, word, lecture recording, interactive models
• interest in HTML5 and EPUB
• Key Issues: multimedia, animations, simulations, dynamic & adaptive content, direct linking and embedding, social connections, adopt-adapt-improve (remix & republish)
• Needs: avoid assumptions that eTextBook will be paid-for, express CC licences, technology that permits what is allowed by the licence (e.g. format that is portable, editable, “disaggregateable”), desirable that technology supports what is required by the licence (e.g. keeps attribution when copied / edited)
• Embedding rights in small parts of content

Discussion:

• Publishing commercial vs OER, some new business model approaches necessary
• Successful combination: commercial content and Open Educational Practices
• Problems for publishing industry: states shifting funding from publishers to open materials
• Project on right embedding / machine readable rights
• Rights: EPUB contains rights as part of assets
• Accessibility: possibility of crowd-sourcing accessible solutions (which are better than in many commercial publications) -> see http://www.diagramcenter.org 
• What do standards contribute to the OER vs commercial content (e.g allowing remixing, rights, …) 

5. ISO Standards by Erlend Øveby, SC36 chair (PDF of presentation below)

• Key issues (Øverby) Digital content could be anything in a digital representation, ideally we should put forward the same educational requirements for all types of digital content.
  • Content should be addressable
  • It should be able to annotate (internal addressing mechanisms should be decided by the content format developers and content-format-readers)
• Challenges:
  • How do services interact with digital content (outside-in)
  • How do we call services from the digital content (inside-out)
• Resource development processes need different tools and scaffolding
  • Authoring/producing:

• Curricula support
• Relevant Learning Object repository access
• Learning goals
• Learning textbook semantics (Exercise, Assessment, Discussion, Interactions, Text, Diagrams, Examples, etc.)
• Metadata descriptions (learning goal, learning topic, learning activities)

• Packaging/Distribution

• Packaged and distributed as ePub3
• Configuring to local school environment (service access etc.)

• Consuming/Usage

• How the resource is used in the learning context.
• Access to services etc.

• Personalisation, a resource should fit in a personalised environment meeting the individual requirements for learners on:

• Accessibility
• Platform/Device
• Learning Style - Preferred pedagogy
• Based on competency of learner
• Curricula goals
• etc.

• SC36 have ongoing work on:

• eTextBook and eSchoolBag in WG6
• Identification of learning services in WG4

Presentation of initial results of ISO survey (http://etextbook-standard.info/) by Crispin Weston, Satis (PDF of presentation below)
Key Issues: Educational Metadata, Interactivity, Learning activities, Resequencing

Actions and Next Steps

• Continue the discussion!
• Summarize and distribute outcomes
• New Works Item (unpaid) in CEN WS-LT - see separate news story in this site
• Possible common workgroup with IDPF and CEN WS-LT
• Discussion in CEN WS-LT - might lead to a proposal to DG Enterprise for a New Work Item / project
• Workspace: The wiki (wiki.teria.no) will be used as a technical workspace - and the etextbookseurope.eu site for promotion and suppport activities
• Next possible meeting online soon - development of scenarios, including LT standards  candidates (LT standards as parameters)
• Next f2f meeting in April co-located with WSLT (Brussels) - provisional date 15 April

These are PDFs of the presentations given at the workshop: