The Agrega project is a federation of learning Digital repository which is to be used by 19 educational authorities in Spain. Each educational authority will have its own repository loaded with curricular learning objects created according to standards, and each single repository will be able to integrate and interoperate with other learning systems locally and worldwide.

Objectives

The project objectives are to:

• Promote, unify and establish a common cataloguing, packaging and publishing standard of Spanish education community learning objects
• Create a technological reference framework where learning objects can be ubiquitous accessed under different models of utilization
• Generate a common procedure and establish the best practices to create digital learning objects from standards

History

In order to create a sustainable learning federation the following principles have been followed as:

• Generate a federation of interoperable Spanish educational repositories instead of a single central repository
• Promote openness to repository interoperability using whenever it is possible well-known standards. Agrega is based in digital repositories standards like IMS DRI, SQI, RSS and OAI-PMH and digital objects standards as SCORM
  SCORM
  Sharable Content Object Reference Model is a collection of standards and specifications for web-based e-learning. It defines communications between client side content and a host system called the run-time environment, which is commonly supported by a learning management system...
  
   for object packaging and IMS SS for object sequencing and LOM-ES Spanish profile for metadata (which is based on Learning object metadata
  Learning object metadata
  Learning Object Metadata is a data model, usually encoded in XML, used to describe a learning object and similar digital resources used to support learning...
  
  ).
• Use whenever is possible, standards and open source tools with a dynamic and active and steadily growing community. Agrega is being developed with well known open source tools.
• Develop a service oriented architecture (SOA
  Service-oriented architecture
  In software engineering, a Service-Oriented Architecture is a set of principles and methodologies for designing and developing software in the form of interoperable services. These services are well-defined business functionalities that are built as software components that can be reused for...
  
  ) and promote a technical architectural style whose goal is to achieve loose coupling
  Loose coupling
  In computing and systems design a loosely coupled system is one where each of its components has, or makes use of, little or no knowledge of the definitions of other separate components. The notion was introduced into organizational studies by Karl Weick...
  
   among heterogeneous interacting software agents.

The Agrega project has a clear focus on integration and interoperability between Agrega learning repositories and the rest of the world. Moreover, it is open to collaborative evolution based on a generic GPL licensing. It is the first step towards providing a nation-wide access to content generated by the education community in a consistent and interoperable way.

Curricular content for Agrega is being developed under Creative Commons

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...

 licensing schemes, can be experimented directly from a web site, offline or by an LMS, and all the contents and application will be localised in Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, Euskera, Catalan

Catalan language

Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...

, Valencian

Valencian

Valencian is the traditional and official name of the Catalan language in the Valencian Community. There are dialectical differences from standard Catalan, and under the Valencian Statute of Autonomy, the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua has been established as its regulator...

, Gallego

Galician language

Galician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...

 and English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

.

With this system, teachers and students will be able to search a vast repository of certified curricular content. access all the learning objects in the repository from a standard browser, and Share content with other teachers and students. Teachers and the education community will be able to create new content in a consistent way, compose, package, reuse already existing content, quickly publish certified curricular content.

Partners

Agrega project partners are: Red.es (public entrepreneurial entity attached to the Ministry of Industry), the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Education and the Spanish Autonomous Communities of Spain.

External links

• Official web site

*Slideshare Agrega

• Video de Agrega
• Agrega y Ariadne
• Agrega Disccusion