Creative Commons engage Cetis to co-lead the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative

We are delighted to announce that Cetis has been commissioned by Creative Commons to help manage the third phase of the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI). The project, which builds on the work of Schema.org, aims to support the discovery of relevant education resources on the web. LRMI is co-led by Creative Commons and the Association of Educational Publishers (AEP)—now the 501(c)(3) arm of the Association of American Publishers—so Phil Barker and Lorna Campbell will be working closely with representatives of both Creative Commons and AEP to support the uptake and implementation of LRMI and raise awareness of its benefits.

Phil has been involved in the LRMI Technical Working Group since its inception in Summer 2011; he and Lorna bring to the initiative over 20 years of combined experience in the creation and implementation of metadata specifications for educational resources. Their work for this phase of LRMI will focus on the governance and long term sustainability of the specification; nurturing an active and engaged technical working group; raising awareness of the benefits and business case for the use of LRMI metadata; providing support and advice for developers and implementers; and synthesising and disseminating the output and lessons learned from existing LRMI implementations.

Paul Hollins, Cetis co-director said:

Cetis is very pleased to be leading this work with Creative Commons. The Learning Resource Metadata Initiative is an important development in making resources more discoverable and so will benefit teachers and learners globally. I am sure that the expertise of Cetis staff in specification development and metadata will greatly contribute to the success of the project.

Cable Green, Director of Global Learning, Creative Commons, said:

Creative Commons is thrilled Lorna and Phil have formally joined the LRMI project. Their combined expertise in meta-data and open educational resources is the perfect combination as we create toolkits, roll out the specification and find a long-term steward for LRMI.

Dave Gladney, Director of Communications Technology/LRMI Project Manager, PreK-12 Learning Group, Association of American Publishers, said:

The LRMI will benefit greatly from Phil and Lorna’s technical expertise and strong background in the education metadata space. We’re very excited to be working alongside Cetis and Creative Commons to move the project forward.

About LRMI

The Learning Resource Metadata Initiative is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and jointly lead by Creative Commons and the Association of Educational Publishers—now the 501(c)(3) arm of the Association of American Publishers—with the aim of making it easier to publish, discover, and deliver high quality educational resources on the web. With input from a wide range of organisations, from both the open and commercial spheres, involved in publishing and using educational resource LRMI successfully proposed additions to schema.org (an initiative of Google, Yahoo and Bing) allowing the description of educationally important properties of resources to be marked-up in web pages in a manner that is easily understood by search engines. This enables people to create search engines that support the filtering search results based on criteria such as their match to a specific part of a curriculum, or the age of the students, or one of several other characteristics.

About Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. They are best known for their free, easy-to-use copyright licenses that provide a simple, standardized way to give the public permission to share and use a creative work subject to a choice of conditions. CC licenses let you easily change your copyright terms from the default of “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.” Creative Commons builds infrastructure. Their users build the commons itself. Creative Commons are working to increase the adoption of their tools, to support and listen to our users, and to serve as a trusted steward of interoperable commons infrastructure.

About Cetis

Cetis is the Centre for Educational Technology, Interoperability and Standards. Cetis staff are globally recognised as leading experts on education technology innovation, interoperability and technology standards. For over a decade Cetis has provided strategic, technical and pedagogical advice on educational technology and standards to funding bodies, standards agencies, government, institutions and commercial partners. Cetis is based at the University of Bolton in partnership with Heriot-Watt University.