Slides for my talk on SWORD for learning materials repositories, including live demos (not shown here- will include Jing video captures later). From the 2009 Intrallect Conference, 25-26 March 2009.

1. SWORD Stories - Easy Deposit
Cutting Through Repositories’ Red Tape
Sarah Currier Consultancy | E-Learning * Resource Sharing * Web 2.0 * Metadata * Repositories

2. Presentation
• Why SWORD?
• What is SWORD?
• What does SWORD include?
• SWORD conformance and APP
• SWORD resources
• SWORD story demos:
– SWORD Story 1: Drag-n-Drop
– SWORD Story 2: Bulk Deposit
– SWORD Story 3: Content Authoring
– SWORD Story 4: Deposit Feeds as Learning Resources
– SWORD Story 5: Take it to the Users
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 2

3. Why SWORD?
An educational technology vision un-realised:
• Easy self-deposit by resource authors
• Easy sharing of resources across collections, organisations,
communities
Barriers:
• Prohibitive rights policies
• Complicated deposit workflows
• Interoperability standards for everything but deposit
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 3

4. Why SWORD?
Solutions:
• Prohibitive rights policies
– Open licensing solutions (e.g. Creative Commons)
– Open educational resources movement
• Complicated deposit workflows
– Repositories supporting:
• minimal self-deposit workflow stage;
• supported by admin workflow stages;
• skirting repositories interfaces altogether:
– drag-n-drop
– interfaces within tools teachers use already
• Interoperability standards for everything but deposit
– JISC Deposit API Working Group (2006)
– ... became the SWORD project (2007)
– ... followed by SWORD2 (2008)
– ... Now SWORD3 is on: UKOLN support for ongoing work
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 4

5. Why SWORD?
Solutions:
• Prohibitive rights policies
– Open licensing solutions (e.g. Creative Commons)
– Open educational resources movement
• Complicated deposit workflows
– Repositories supporting:
• minimal self-deposit workflow stage;
• supported by admin workflow stages;
• skirting repositories interfaces altogether:
– drag-n-drop
– interfaces within tools teachers use already
• Interoperability specs for everything but deposit
– JISC Deposit API Working Group (2006)
– ... became the SWORD project (2007)
– ... followed by SWORD2 (2008)
– ... Now SWORD3 is on: UKOLN support for ongoing work
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 5

6. What is SWORD?
SWORD is:
• Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit
• a profile of the Atom Publishing Protocol
• a light-weight, open specification for remote deposit
of resources into repositories and similar systems
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 6

7. What does SWORD include?
SWORD specification supports:
• Remotely querying a repository for information about
collections available for deposit.
• Depositing resources into available collections, with or
without specifying user log-in details.
• Mediated deposit, where a user (e.g. a librarian) deposits on
behalf of another user (e.g. a teacher); the resources are only
deposited to collections the teacher has access to, and are
recorded by the repository as belonging to that teacher.
• Developer support functions: No0p and Verbose.
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 7

8. SWORD conformance and APP
SWORD includes:
• a subset of elements from the Atom Publishing Protocol
– focusing on POST
• mandatory and optional elements
NB: repositories may also support Atom Publishing
Protocol elements not included in SWORD, e.g. PUT
(update), DELETE
– none do yet, to my knowledge
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 8

9. SWORD resources: clients
SWORD project clients
• SWORD open source reference clients:
– Command line
– GUI (desktop)
– Web-based
• SWORD demonstrator Facebook client
http://www.swordapp.org/sword/demonstrators
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 9

10. SWORD resources: reference
Reference implementations of repositories
• intraLibrary
• DSpace
• Eprints
• Fedora
• Test packages for deposit also available
http://www.swordapp.org/sword/demonstrators
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 10

11. SWORD stories
SWORD Stories for e-Learning: Use Cases
1. Drag-and-drop desktop tools
2. Bulk deposit: sharing metadata
3. Deposit from content authoring tools
4. Drag-and-drop newsfeeds into repository
5. Taking SWORD to the people:
– SWORD Facebook App
– OfficeSWORD: deposit straight from Microsoft Office
– SWORD widget
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 11

12. SWORD Story 1: Drag-n-Drop #1
intraLibrary Drag-n-Drop Desktop Tool
• Simple batch file using SWORD client
• Supports multiple file / IMS CP deposit
• Supports deposit of metadata-only XML LOM files
• Works with intraLibrary workflows/application
profiles/metadata templates
• Requires set-up with correct
username/password/collection details
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 12

13. SWORD Story 1: Drag-n-Drop #2
Keele University Desktop Tool
• Took it forward for real users:
– user-friendly dialog
– security enhancements
Michael Debenham will be demo’ing in next presentation,
after the break.
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 13

14. SWORD Story 2: Bulk Deposit
Two large-scale public-sector educational resource
providers wanted to share resources:
• NHS Education for Scotland Shared Learning Portal
• IRISS Learning Exchange
Interoperability specifications:
• Extract metadata nightly from IRISS LX using either:
– OAI-PMH, or
– SRU
• Deposit it into NHS Shared Learning via:
– SWORD
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 14

15. SWORD Story 2: Bulk Deposit
Let’s have a look:
(search for “ethical” in both)
• IRISS Learning Exchange
http://www.iriss.ac.uk/openlx/
• NHS Education for Scotland Shared Learning Portal
http://www.sharedlearning.scot.nhs.uk/
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 15

16. SWORD Story 3: Content Authoring
Compendle Course Authoring Tool:
• Easy creation of SCORM-compliant courses
– Publish as zip file SCORM package
– Publish as HTML
– Publish to CD-ROM
– Publish to repository (using SWORD)
• Round trip: can download resources from repository for
inclusion in SCORM course
– Using SRU behind search facility
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 16

17. SWORD Story 3: Content Authoring
Let’s Have a Look:
• NHS Scotland Shared Learning Portal
http://www.sharedlearning.scot.nhs.uk/
1. Find resource from repository (using SRU)
2. Publish SCORM course to repository (using SWORD)
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 17

18. SWORD Story 4: Deposit Feeds
JISC-funded FeedForward tool:
• Desk-top tool
• Gather all your feeds’ results
• Categorise your feeds
• Decide which feed categories you want to see more or less
of, dynamically
• Collect individual feed results
• Drag-and-drop collection as IMS Content Package, with:
Author, Title, Description, Keywords
... in IEEE LOM Metadata in Package
... into repository (using SWORD)
Let’s have a look ...
http://getfeedforward.org/
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 18

19. SWORD Story 5: Take it to the Users
5a: Facebook SWORD Client App
http://fb.swordapp.org/
Let’s have a look ...
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 19

20. SWORD Story 5: Take it to the Users
5b: OfficeSWORD
http://www.codeplex.com/OfficeSWORD
“A sample plug-in for uploading Office documents to a
repository directly from within the Office
applications using the SWORD protocol.”
“License: Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL)”
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 20

21. SWORD Story 5: Take it to the Users
5c: SWORD Deposit Widget
http://www.rwidgets.co.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=wiki:sword
Let’s have a look at it in Netvibes (iFrame)
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 21

22. Contacts
SWORD Website: http://www.swordapp.org/
Intrallect (for intraLibrary SWORD support and tools, and
NHS/Compendle projects): enquiries@intrallect.com
Keele University (for Keele SWORD desktop deposit), contact
Boyd or Jonathan:
b.duffee@isc.keele.ac.uk, jonathan@cs.keele.ac.uk
Sarah Currier Consultancy: sarah.currier@gmail.com
Other relevant references, resources and links:
http://www.elearning.ac.uk/features/sword
NB: This SWORD article was the most popular yet on e-Learning
Focus: Downloads Feb 2009= 1045; March 2009 (so far)= 288
Slides ©2009 Sarah Currier; available for reuse under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/scotland/
Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/ 22