BUILDING A NATIONAL OBJECT REPOSITORY:

The combination of content or objects stored on servers and organized by metadata is the foundation of a repository. This foundation has a number of important features. First, any content provider can label objects using a shared metadata scheme, post them on a server and be confident they will be easily found by others using the repository. Secondly, objects can be stored on different servers in different locations but can be accessed by anyone using the repository. An object repository may well be a collection of distributed servers but the user never needs to be aware of this.

Building an object repository is the first step in online education. Whole curriculums and courses of study can be assembled from the objects in a rich object repository. Through the Internet, learners in all parts of the country can use and share object repositories at any time of the day or night.

Because of the importance of education to Canada's economic future, building a robust infrastructure for a shared national object repository is an important project for the nation in the 21st Century.

OTHER RESOURCES:

Internet2: Building and Deploying Advanced, Networked Applications by Ted Hanss
CAUSE/EFFECT Volume 20, Number 2, Summer 1997, pp. 4-7. The Internet2 Project, a consortium effort of over 100 US-based universities, is investing in the upgrade of campus and national network platforms for application areas advanced education. This article provides a brief overview of the project and details issues that the application effort intends to address.

MERLOT
(Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching)
A resource and community for educators and students in higher education, offering free access to more than 3700 web-based learning materials in a range of disciplines.

Educational Object Repositories and XML [195K PDF File]
by Michael Magee
An argument in favor of XML as a solution for communication and information exchange in the digital environment.