OSFORA Blog

Chris Raasch and Hal Schlais presented OSFORA at the 2008 WiscNet Future Technologies Conference on April 14th, in Madison, WI.

The AADLC will demonstrate the Wisconsin Federated Repository, the first instance of OSFORA, at the WiscNet Futrue Technology Conference on Wednesday, May 14.  Presenters will be David Wirth, Chris Raasch and Hal Schlais. The FTC is May 13th and 14th.    Check out www.wiscnet.net/ftc

OSFORA, the Open Source Federated Object Repository Architecture under research and development here at the AADLC is going public!

OSFORRA emerged during collaborations over the past couple of years involving the AADLC, the Institute for Innovation in Undergraduate Research and Learning (IIURL) and Computer Science Department at the UW-La Crosse, researchers from the UW-Madison, and the University of Wisconsin System (UWS). The goal of this collaboration was to create digital content (LOs) that would enable teachers to be successful in math and science areas of a standardized certification exam called the PRAXIS II. It needed an efficient method to develop and share LO content among several development teams in the UWS.

OSFORA is a CORDRA-like architecture; it consists of any number of Local Content Servers (LCSs) linked through a central registry. LCSs are enhanced content management systems (CMSs) with automated registration functionality that enables metadata uploads to one or more central registries. The current exemplar, the Wisconsin Federated Registry is based on OTS software that has been identified by the AADLC technical team: CWIS provides the central registry functionality and Plone provides the basis for the CMS functionality on the LCSs. There are currently two LCSs up and running with the the PRAXIS Wisconsin Project LO content development at the IIURL being the first working test.

Watch this blog for updates in the very near future. Planned additions include:

• a registry release that allows automated linking to the ADLR;
• other implementations of LCSs at UW Campuses and
• integration with MOODLE.

We invite your feedback and participation in this discussion and hopefully in the OSFORA project. Our goal is a reasonably well featured repository available to all. Feel free to contact Hal Schlais (hschlais@uwsa.edu)