The Manchester PLE is a Personal Learning Environment that provides an integrated set of facilities to support formal and informal learning. The system provides an integrated social networking service with profiles, groups, blogs, fora, learning spaces, and facilities for any user to set assignments. Spaces, which are unique to the PLE, are multi-media multi-user spaces which can be used by learners to construct artefacts that are useful in the learning process. Spaces are sufficiently flexible in use to allow users to use them in a wide variety of ways. As such they incorporate the idea of users subverting their use to satisfy their own learning needs.
The PLE is close to a major release that incorporates enhancements of the PLE’s user interface and provides new functionality, including functionality to support institutional use. The code consists mostly of open source software with a small amount of free to use software that we intend to later release as open source. The code base is actively maintained and improved by Hedtek on an ongoing basis, and the PLE used in the University of Manchester’s School of Computer Science, which serves as test site for the PLE.
We can also supply hosted facilities and, for those that might need them, maintenance contracts. Free hosted facilities are available for groups or class cohorts where a facilitator, teacher or group of learners is happy to actively feed experience and/or ideas into our ongoing research centered around the use of the PLE and its larger pedagogic framework. We are particularly interested in working with people who promote self-directed learning and the growth of metacognitive skills.
The Manchester PLE leverages a code base produced as part of the JISC-Funded EIE Project.
Please contact mark at hedtek dot com for further details about the project, the forthcoming release and/or hosting.
Main technologies: PHP, Flex, Java, mySQL, and related Web technologies
FishDelish
Subject to final approval from JISC
FishDelish is a partnership between the University of Manchester’s School of Computer Science, the FishBase Information and Research Group Inc (FIN), and Hedtek.
FIN, a not-for-profit NGO, is the publisher of Fishbase, both as a web service and as a desktop database application. FishBase contains information on 31,500 fish and sealife species. This species data includes 279,900 common names, 49,200 pictures, and 43,800 references. The FishBase web service and its mirrors receive an impressive 400M hits per annum.
The FishBase Project will republish parts of FishBase’s data as linked data; together we plan to place more than 100M triples on the Web. We will also provide
browser-based interfaces that mash up FishBase data with other linked data sources;
novel mechanisms to easily expose, via a self-publishing mechanism, individuals’ and organisations’ field observations and specimen holdings, automatically mashing-up this data with species-specific data drawn from our and others’ triples stores.
a port of a sample of FishBase’s educational resources on the use FishBase in Ichthyology, repurposing these materials to cover the use of SPARQL and third-party tools that are seamlessly integrated into a ‘live document’-based SPARQL tutorial system.
Main technologies: Linked Data, triple stores, Ruby-on-Rails,extensions to Hedtek’s iDoc, and related Web technologies
ourWikiBooks
ourWikiBooks will investigate student authorship of textbook material: “ourWikiBooks will undertake co-development, with teachers and GCSE and A-level students, of a new digital collection of key concerns and knowledge in computing education.” As part of this we will also be concerned with continuing professional development for teachers of Information Technology.
The project is led by the University of Manchester’s School of Computer Science and funded by JISC.
Main technologies: MediaWiki and open source publishing technology developed by the University of Manchester’s School of Computer Science.
JISC personalisation survey and analysis
In partnership with Sero Ltd, a summary and and analysis of JISC-funded personalisation projects, with recommendations to JISC for future development and roll-out of personalisation technologies.
MOSAIC architecture
A short extension to the MOSAIC Project, describing how the MOSAIC search engine might be implemented at either institutional or national scale.
Introduction to Software Engineering
Development and presentation of a new Advanced MSc level course for the University of Manchester’s School of Computer Science. This course will cover topics in agile software engineering with an emphasis on system structure. An underlying rationale is to use experiential learning to teach teamwork skills, essential for both software engineering practice and for use during the student’s further learning activities.
current projects
The Manchester Personal Learning Environment
The Manchester PLE is a Personal Learning Environment that provides an integrated set of facilities to support formal and informal learning. The system provides an integrated social networking service with profiles, groups, blogs, fora, learning spaces, and facilities for any user to set assignments. Spaces, which are unique to the PLE, are multi-media multi-user spaces which can be used by learners to construct artefacts that are useful in the learning process. Spaces are sufficiently flexible in use to allow users to use them in a wide variety of ways. As such they incorporate the idea of users subverting their use to satisfy their own learning needs.
The PLE is close to a major release that incorporates enhancements of the PLE’s user interface and provides new functionality, including functionality to support institutional use. The code consists mostly of open source software with a small amount of free to use software that we intend to later release as open source. The code base is actively maintained and improved by Hedtek on an ongoing basis, and the PLE used in the University of Manchester’s School of Computer Science, which serves as test site for the PLE.
We can also supply hosted facilities and, for those that might need them, maintenance contracts. Free hosted facilities are available for groups or class cohorts where a facilitator, teacher or group of learners is happy to actively feed experience and/or ideas into our ongoing research centered around the use of the PLE and its larger pedagogic framework. We are particularly interested in working with people who promote self-directed learning and the growth of metacognitive skills.
The Manchester PLE leverages a code base produced as part of the JISC-Funded EIE Project.
Please contact mark at hedtek dot com for further details about the project, the forthcoming release and/or hosting.
Main technologies: PHP, Flex, Java, mySQL, and related Web technologies
FishDelish
Subject to final approval from JISC
FishDelish is a partnership between the University of Manchester’s School of Computer Science, the FishBase Information and Research Group Inc (FIN), and Hedtek.
FIN, a not-for-profit NGO, is the publisher of Fishbase, both as a web service and as a desktop database application. FishBase contains information on 31,500 fish and sealife species. This species data includes 279,900 common names, 49,200 pictures, and 43,800 references. The FishBase web service and its mirrors receive an impressive 400M hits per annum.
The FishBase Project will republish parts of FishBase’s data as linked data; together we plan to place more than 100M triples on the Web. We will also provide
Main technologies: Linked Data, triple stores, Ruby-on-Rails,extensions to Hedtek’s iDoc, and related Web technologies
ourWikiBooks
ourWikiBooks will investigate student authorship of textbook material: “ourWikiBooks will undertake co-development, with teachers and GCSE and A-level students, of a new digital collection of key concerns and knowledge in computing education.” As part of this we will also be concerned with continuing professional development for teachers of Information Technology.
The project is led by the University of Manchester’s School of Computer Science and funded by JISC.
Main technologies: MediaWiki and open source publishing technology developed by the University of Manchester’s School of Computer Science.
JISC personalisation survey and analysis
In partnership with Sero Ltd, a summary and and analysis of JISC-funded personalisation projects, with recommendations to JISC for future development and roll-out of personalisation technologies.
MOSAIC architecture
A short extension to the MOSAIC Project, describing how the MOSAIC search engine might be implemented at either institutional or national scale.
Introduction to Software Engineering
Development and presentation of a new Advanced MSc level course for the University of Manchester’s School of Computer Science. This course will cover topics in agile software engineering with an emphasis on system structure. An underlying rationale is to use experiential learning to teach teamwork skills, essential for both software engineering practice and for use during the student’s further learning activities.