Markup of Educational Content

Monica Langerth Zetterman

monica.langerth@ped.uu.se

Digital Literature, Uppsala University


The purpose of this presentation is to illustrate the implementation of
methods and tools for separating markup, from the actual XML document. 
   This is being done in the project Educational Content Markup
       [Note 1: The project Educational Content Markup is a joint project and the
      partners are: The research program Digital Literature and the Electronic
      Publishing Centre, both Uppsala University. The Swedish Royal Library, the
      National Agency for Education in Sweden, Ekelunds Publishing Company and
      Center for IT in Northern Sweden. The project is funded by the Swedish
      Agency for Innovation Systems. 
      The author of this poster presentation is co-ordinating the project. For
      participants and further information, see
      .]
      where the
object is to explore and develop tools and methods for the creation and
management of encoded, modularised and portable digital content to be used
   in educational settings.
       [Note 2: For further information on the research program Digital Literature
      publications and research areas, see:
      .]
     

  
The underlying idea in the project is to enable the production, use and
reuse of document content in different fields of application and to support
various groups of users and end-users. 
Concerning the fields of application our focus is on teaching and learning
in higher education and the production of academic research publications. 
Hence, one group of users are teachers creating e.g. collections of
documents to be used in classes. We picture both students and teachers as a
group of end-users. 
Another group of users are scholars and other content providers concerned
with document creation and the production process. 


   
In this project we have chosen to differentiate two kinds of markup in order
to distinguish fields of application and groups of users. Thus, the
differentiation described below guides our exploration of methods and the
development of tools.
 

•Original/internal markup: Markup placed within the document - as opposed
to stand-off markup- in this context often capturing the structure of a
document or some specific features such as personal names. Either the markup
was already added to the document by another part or the markup is created
during the document creation process. Markup is automatically added by
   controlled input using templates in the DiVA system
       [Note 3: DiVA is the Swedish acronym for Academic Archive Online. For further
      information on the DiVA system and related publications, see
       , for the technical report,
      see: .]
      or semi-automatically
by the content producer.

• Additional markup: Markup added after the creation process which can be
   done with optional annotation techniques such as Annotea or the TEI
   guidelines
       [Note 4: See .]
     . The additional markup might be added and stored internally in
the document, or, annotations might be added and stored externally in
separate XML-files, not altering the any markup internally added to the
document. For example Annotea allows annotations to be attached to resources
without modifying the original/internal markup.


   
It is important to point out that our two views of markup can be, and often
are different, but this does not mean that the methods are non-exclusive.
However, a markup scheme designed to catch in-depth descriptions of a chosen
aspect, rather than describing the internal structure of a document, serves
a special purpose and therefore anticipates a different data model than a
structured oriented scheme. That is one reason why we, in this project,
think it is useful to separate the additional markup from the
original/internal markup. 


   
Other reasons to separate different kinds of markup have to do with
different kinds of uses and user-groups. By various means of organising,
filtering and presentation, one and the same content might be utilized in a
range of subject areas and for different educational levels, from primary to
higher education or in-service and in-company training. 
In trying to accomplish this, several different XML techniques and tools are
being used for the implementation of a prototype of an educational content
management system, currently consisting of three related parts.


1. 
      In one part of the project, a prototype provides means to take the
descriptive markup added to the internal XML markup and treat it as external
annotations. The browser is used as the markup client, using Annotea
protocol both on the client side and both on the server side. At the backend
   a RDF
       [Note 5: Resource Description Framework, see .]
      database is used as the content store. This architecture allows
usage of arbitrary application profiles and an ability to integrate the
   information with other tools.
       [Note 6: For a technical report on the prototype, see Engman.]
     

2. 
      In the second part we explore tools and schemes for adding external
markup - stand-off markup - to documents already annotated with TEI/XML
markup of personal names, dates and places. Here we will test schemas
providing uses of authority files such as the first draft of MADS which is
designed for description of agents (e.g. people, organisations) and terms
   (e.g. topics, geographical places).


3. 
      In the third part we are exploring applicable methods and tools for
adding markup when authoring. The idea is to integrate the process into the
author's natural workflow such as the software they use for text editing
   (e.g. OpenOffice or MS Office). These kinds of tools should support and
facilitate work performed by the author during the production and revision
of texts.


 
This poster will provide demonstration of a prototype tool implementation
and uses, examples of markup, and a description of current status in the
project progress. We are looking forward to get a chance to exchange ideas
and well-informed feedback on the underlying ideas, choice of methods and
implementation of tools in this project. 
   



Bibliography



Annotea

Engman, J.
Handling fine-meshed filtering from archive to resource level
Master thesis, Umeå University
2004


Metadata Authority Description Schema