Paraportal goes live

The paraportal pilot activity is now moving ahead:

· We have put online an instance of the Paraportal, which we demonstrated at the IDEA event (and described in a previous blog entry). This instance currently demonstrates usage data from the live production instance of Scootle, on how often users have associated learning resources with content descriptions through inclusion in the same learning path. You can view the Paraportal online.
· We are planning to expand the Paraportal to allow more queries. In particular, we will be exposing usage data from Scootle on resources that have been frequently viewed, and on resources associated with content descriptions through the various sources of information used internally (common ScOT thesaurus terms, expert alignment through ANZ-LOM, as well as inclusion in learning paths).
· The Northern Territory Department of Education & Training have expressed interest in contributing to the national Paradata Exchange usage data out of their Moodle learning management system. Their particular interest is in identifying resources popular with particular demographic groups, such as indigenous students and remote schools, and sharing this information with other jurisdictions serving similar groups. To provide an easy pathway for jurisdictions to contribute paradata to the Paradata Exchange, ESA will accept CSV files of usage data, and will convert them to the JSON format consumed by the Learning Registry infrastructure.

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Paraportal: What else is out there?

The Paradata Exchange project team turned out in force to the IDEA12 conference, held in Melbourne on December 4 through 6. There were two sessions about paradata given on the 5th of December:

• a panel discussion in the morning, about paradata standards
• a demonstration in the afternoon, of a widget built on top of the Learning Registry API.

Welcome to paradata

Welcome to the Australian Paradata blog! The project team for the National Paradata Exchange project has set this blog up as a forum for all interested in paradata. We hope to see discussion and ideas in this space about how to use paradata in Australian Education in general. In particular, we would like to see discussion on how to use paradata for better outcomes around the Australian Curriculum—better discovery of resources aligned with the Curriculum, and better informed procurement policy for resources aligned with the Curriculum.

The About page explains the concept of paradata, and sets some of the context for the National Paradata Exchange project. In future posts, we will give more information about what the project has done to date and what it is trying to achieve, and we will invite feedback about what directions to take the work.

We are launching this blog around the demonstration of paradata in the IDEA12 conference, using the Paraportal. Our next post will give a lot more detail about what the Paraportal demonstrates—and how it can serve as the start of a conversation around paradata.