Attendance in person: Rob Brittain, Tony Calenti, Warren Crosbie, Kylie Davies, Brad Dean, David Fregon, Gus Gollings, Bruce Joy, Kevin Littlejohn, Jan Smith, Susan Whittam, Con Validas, Robert Zaar.

On IRC: George Pleger, Eduzope Austria and Richard Boyd New Zealand, later Anoush Najarian from Armenia

Apologies: Ken Young and David Lutz.

It was a very busy night with lots happening. It was great to see a number of new faces.

Kevin Littlejohn told us about Obsidian's plans for Zope and Plone training in Melbourne (Obsidian and Beehive are partners for Zope training in Australia). Courses are starting in late February. (I was assisting late comers through the locked back gate so missed all of this)

Gus Gollings demonstrated Common Ground Publisher and explained Common Ground Markup Language 'CGML'. Gus is the project manager for the Creator-to-Consumer System, www.C-2-Csystem.com, and is a published author on multilingual book production. Another thoroughly prepared and informative demonstration from Gus.

CGML is an XML Document Type Definition which allows XML data exports to many standards, e.g. JDF print rendering, ONIX (for book sites like Amazon.com), AGLS, Dublin Core, MARC library catalogues, LaTex and DocBook. See:http://commongroundgroup.com/Software/CGML.pdf(550Kb)http://commongroundgroup.com/Publishing/brochure/C2C/whatsnew_html

David Fregon gave a summary of the very successful Plone workshop he ran with Robert Zaar at the Victorian IT Teachers Conference (VITTA). He then demonstrated Plone 2. Dave was given lots of questions. Customising the final look of a Plone site to your own style is much easier with this version a knowledge of ZPT isn't necessary. The entire layout is controlled by css unlike current versions of Plone that use tables for layout. It is compliant for people with disabilities. Dave demonstrated how easy it was to enlarge text. Groups have been added to Plone - this means users of a particular group can have some specialised content not available to the rest of the site. Achetypes have been added as well. You can download Plone 2 from here http://www.plone.org/newsitems/plone-2.0rc2-released this is a test release a final version is expected around Xmas. Further information: http://plone.org/development/current/projects/WhatsNewInPlone20ForDevelopers.

Robert Zaar and some others conducted an IRC chat on education and Plone during the meeting. The transcript is below.

Jan Smith gave a progress report on the planned Zope 3 Development Sprint. We have the venue kindly donated by Trinity College, we have Jim Fulton Chief Technical Officer of Zope Corporation available to fly here, we have many developers keen to have another sprint, we have businesses who refer to OzZope and the sprints when they talk to prospective clients about the Zope community in Melbourne being the strongest in Australasia. However we are short of $2350 needed to fly Jim Fulton out for the sprint. We currently have offers of a few hundred dollars - not enough for a sprint. The meeting decided to inform the ozzope mailing list of the situation. Jan is going overseas and is unable to spend more time trying to locate funding for the sprint. Suggestions were made to move the sprint to a little later in the year but Trinity College will not be available again until July 2004.

Kylie Davies talked about Computerbank. Computerbank Victoria recycles computers donated from industry to the poor and disadvantaged. The computers are loaded with a Linux operating system and a small bundle of open source software. Computerbank has a Plone web site it has been experimenting with and a Zope Silva site for its documentation both installed by Dave Fregon. They are finding the thru the web documentation site it be far superior to their old ways of documentation. Infrae the developers of Silva in Rotterdam keep an interested eye over Computerbank and are planning to test their upgrade scripts with their data.fs file. The documentation site is temporarily on this server: http://axxs.org/computerbank_doc

The meeting ended 10.10pm approx.

Warren Crosbie will be organising the January Meeting.

Minutes ~ Jan Smith

IRC Plone/Education LOG from the OzZope Meeting Wednesday 10^th December, 2003
In this log George Pleger is from EduZope in Austria
rb23543534 is Richard Boyd from New Zealand
On line in Melbourne were Rob Zaar, Warren Crosbie, Kylie Davies, Jan Smith and Bruce Joy.

One day later Anoush Najarian from Armenia joined #zope-au mistaking the time of the meeting - a transcript of Anoush's interests is below the log.

georgP has joined #zope-au

<georgP> hi, i'm georg pleger from eduzope, Austria. i was expecting to meet rob gegarding plone in education in australia in this channel

<georgP> does anybody know about such an appointment in this zope-au channel?

* rb23543534 has joined #zope-au

<rb23543534> Hello, is the meeting on at the moment?

<georgP> rb23543534: hi! im georg pleger from eduzope, Austria. are you robert?

<rb23543534> No I'm Richard, I heard about this through edu plone news group from robert

<rb23543534> I'm in NZ, I hope that's OK :-)

<georgP> do you know who is going to come to the channel?

<georgP> NZ?

<rb23543534> New Zealand

<rb23543534> I understand that Robert will be here, and Jodok from eduplone consortium will try to get up early to be here

<georgP> i'm the "replacement" for jodok. he has to be at a customer

<georgP> i'm the initiator of eduplone, now responsible for the standardization part

<rb23543534> Nice to meet you

<georgP> while waiting for robert: what's your background regarding plone in edu?

<rb23543534> I'm trying to get a project started for plone which will be used for administration in schools and integrate with the learning side

<georgP> ok

<rb23543534> I have not developed anything of note for zope or plone, so I'm on a learning curve

<georgP> i see

<rb23543534> but I do have some ideas on the structure/interface of a site that I hope will make it useable for teachers

<georgP> i'm not a programmer, but an educational technologist

<georgP> main focus: integration of open souce and educational technology standards

<rb23543534> So you make sure it will work with IMS, SIF etc.

<georgP> exactly

<georgP> at the mom we are focussing on IMS

<rb23543534> I'm excited about those possibilities, as I don't see anything in NZ that even tries to be compatable with anything!

<rb23543534> Were any of you involved in NavCon earlier this year?

<georgP> IMS Content Packaging, IMS Question and Test Interoperability and IMS Learning Design are supported on a very basic level by our actual development version

<georgP> NavCon: none of us

<rb23543534> To be fully IMS compliant, does it have to model all the bits and pieces that IMS provides, or just handle the transfer of data between applications?

<rb23543534> The full IMS model seems to just about provide too much flexibility

<rb23543534> (speaking from the point of view of a content developer)

<georgP> there is a couple of IMS specifications, at the mom no single system implements all specs

<georgP> so there is no system that's fully IMS compliant in this sense

<rb23543534> I've mostly looked at the Learning Design specs. Its object model looks much more complex than most teachers would use

<georgP> our main target is to enable content producers to use the most important specs

<rb23543534> Your target sounds good to me

<georgP> IMS-LD: correct. too complex if you use the whole range

<georgP> at the mom we implemented on only two roles: student and tutor

<georgP> IML-LD would allow for any number of roles

<georgP> richard: are you sure, that we are on the rigth channel in the right time?

<rb23543534> Robert said that I started at 8:30 EST

<rb23543534> sorry it started

<georgP> and now it's 9:00 EST?

<rb23543534> I don't know. I had an idea that it was in 30 minutes time, but I was having a hard time connecting to freenode

<rb23543534> so I decided to connect earlier

<rb23543534> It is 10:00 New Zealand time ... :-)

<georgP> and 10 am Austian time

<georgP> so the others will join in half an hour

<rb23543534> I think so. Day light saving messes things up.

<georgP> ok, will be back in half an hour

<rb23543534> OK see you then

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<waz> Greetings from Melbourne. Gus from Common Ground is presenting re: common ground publisher

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<ozope> the ozzope meeting is currently undrway we are looking at gus's demo fo the common ground publisher

<waz> test.

<richardb> Is that a zope product?

<ozope> yep certaubky is

<ozope> www.commonground.com

<waz> & try: http://www.cgdemo.com/

<richardb> thanks, got it

<georgP> hello, i'm georg pleger from eduzope, Austria. is this going to be the meeting regarding plone in education in Australia?

<ozope> welcome

<ozope> yes that is just starting now

<georgP> ozope: hi, are you robert?

<ozope> Hi Robert here. I'm co-using Jans termina

<ozope> Dave Fregon is now giving a roundup of what we did at VITTA

<ozope> I meant Jan's Terminal

<georgP> greetings from jodok batlogg, eduplone. i'm his "replacement" as he is busy at a customer site

<ozope> please pass on our greetings

<georgP> yes, i will. thanks for the invitation to join you in your discussion!

<ozope> What time is it there?

<waz> 8:30pm

<georgP> in austria its now 10:30 am

<ozope> very reasonable

<waz> good morning.

<georgP> hi!

<georgP> ok, i'm listening to dave :-)

<ozope> Basically DaveF is saying there is a huge amount of interest in eduplone

<ozope> among teachers.

<georgP> good to hear

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<ozope> Here in Melbourne there are many intranet solutions around and some home grown ones in eg cold fusion and php

<ozope> Georg is there much interest among schools in Austria/Germany for eduplone?

<georgP> in austria there was just an evalutation of content management systems, done by the austrian ministry of education and sience, started weith more than 300 products

<georgP> plone / eduplone is now in the list of 3 products wich should be used in schools and universities

<waz> george, please let me know more about the evuation. wcrosbie@yahoo.com.au

<waz> austria sounds like the place to be

<georgP> i will search and send the exact link

<waz> thanks

<georgP> our main focus is integration of open souce and educational technology standards

<georgP> IMS Content Packaging, IMS Question and Test Interoperability and IMS Learning Design are supported on a very basic level by our actual development version

<ozope> what about learning design/objects

<waz> ron oliver, in Perth, WA writes about edu standards, but he's not involved in OzZope (yet!)

<georgP> IMS-Learning Design is quit complex

<georgP> at the mom we are only supporting two roles: student and tutor

<waz> complex. we need to know where to start.

<georgP> IMS-LD would allow for any number of roles

<georgP> our target is to enable content producers to use the most important specs

<ozope> Is there an ultimate aim to implement all of it eventually?

<georgP> so we decided to first implement a subset of IMS specifications

<georgP> yes, the ultimate aim is to implement all

<ozope> :)

<richardb> The news item on plone has links to the evaluation site http://plone.org/newsitems/Ministryrecomm

<ozope> Have you looked at compatibility with webCT or blackboard?

<georgP> thx richardb!

<waz> re open source, & education in Australia: http://www.osv.org.au/education - based in Melbourne, but not yet aware of Zope.

<georgP> blackboard is used at some universities in austria

<georgP> so it will be an issue for us how to migrate contents from these systems

<georgP> regarding the business modell: all our components will be gpl-ed

<georgP> first components to be availabel before x-mas

<georgP> at the moment we are 8 companies from austria, germany, netherlands and norway

<georgP> the companies paid 5.000 euro to finance the central coordination

<georgP> my part is the standardization

<georgP> i'm member in the european standardization body regarding elearning

<georgP> with lot's of connections to other standardization activities, eg. www.cetis.ac.uk

<georgP> cetis is a great entry point for standardization issues

<georgP> the are members in IMS as well

<georgP> ok, what are the plans in australia? how can we collaborate?

<ozope> There are a variety of companies that have been involved in the educational sector and have various products created at either zope, CMF or plone levels. It would be wonderful to have a common approach

<waz> I'd like to create a basic portal for use by community learning centres, especially admin workers, trainers (e.g. flower arranging), and course designers (non-technical). Where do I start?

<ozope> so all these elements can be harmonised

<georgP> we would like to coordinate/integrate some of these things

<waz> I'd like to help.

<georgP> main question for us at the moment is raising the money for the next development phase

<georgP> do you want to officially join the group of eduplone companies or are you thinking in the direction of a more loose cooperation?

<georgP> to be open: it's lot of work to coordinate the 8 companies in europe :-)

<georgP> so if you would like to be core-members, we will ask to contribute some money and/or components

<ozope> I'm listening in to Dave's presentation and writing at the same time.

<waz> I'd like to have materials to pitch to research funders here in e-learning research in Oz.

<waz> $ migh come if research gets funded.

<georgP> my suggestion would be to have one contact person for eduplone in australia

<richardb> Same in New Zealand. Government is throwing tons of money at e-learning initiatives.

<ozope> <jan speaking> at this stage i think we would be best as observers - we have no funding to give a core group at this stage

<richardb> This includes private corporations and 1 year research grants for teachers

<waz> my impression is that e-learning practice in oz is v.dispersed, and research is ?

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<georgP> bluedynamics is sponsor of zope europe, the organization of paul, of course alex is in regular contact with paul

<georgP> bluedynamics is a founding company of eduplone

<waz> hi Zen. Dave is just completing a talk on Plone.

<ozope> <jan> i will put something about edu plone on the ozzope mailing list it may draw in others interested in education

<georgP> ok

<georgP> is there any planned event in this scene you are working towards?

<waz> george, are you on the OzZope mailing list. it's pretty low volume.

<ozope> ozzope sprint we are about to discuss next

<ozope> we are trying for feb 4 - 8th but funding is slow in coming

<georgP> we will have the snow sprint from 7-14th february

<waz> & there are some presentations coming up to o/s, Linux type events.

<georgP> anybody planning to attend ? ;-)

<ozope> thats the plone sprint i see its booked out already

<richardb> RE Events: NAVCON is a huge conference, joint australia/NZ. It is THE showcase for educational technology in NZ (don't) know about status in Australia. It is next September

<ozope> ah richardb are u from new zealand - welcome

<richardb> Yes

<georgP> oh, if an australian participant would like to participate at snow sprint, we would find a place :-)

<ozope> there are a couple of zopers in nz i will contact u tomorrow about them

<richardb> thanks very much

<ozope> tks will pass that on :)

<georgP> our next steps will be to publish the availability of the code components at eduplone.org

<georgP> are there any concrete questions that should be discussed now?

<ozope> just asking group know

<ozope> now opps

<kylied> Hi George, I'm Bruce. Just wondering about support for SCORM

<georgP> hi bruce, SCORM isn't at the agenda so far. but no problem if there are sponsors or co-developers

<kylied> How long before ISM compliance?

<georgP> IMS is a huge set of specifications

<richardb> SCROM is just a subclass of IMS - or have I misunderstood?

<georgP> we are focussing on the most important subset of IMS

<kylied> :-)

<georgP> to allow content producers start producing their material in a standard conforant way

<ozope> Is there any connection with connexion?

<georgP> aaaaahhh will lose connettion in 30 secs

<georgP> will try to come back

<waz> bye

<waz> richard, what's the url for navcon?

* georgP has quit IRC (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)#)

<richardb> http://www.navcon.org/

<waz> thanks. are you presenting?

<richardb> It is named after the 'navigator schools' project in Australia where certain schools were funded to try out using IT technologies

<richardb> Not on the agenda yet, but if there was a Australia/NZ project then I could probably get in

<waz> I'll check out navcon.org (connection here is stalled), but are there lists I could join?

<richardb> Just plain plone is tons better than some of the software that I saw promoted

<richardb> In my experience, schools will buy even second rate software as long as it interfaces well with their adminstration system

<richardb> That will be the main issue in promoting eduplone in NZ

<ozope> This is an obvious step (seek funding for a pilot project, possible kick back to eduplone), are you interested Richard?

<richardb> Yes I would be interested.

<ozope> What admin software is used in NZ? My college uses Maze (Perth based but international particularly Hong Kong apparently).

<richardb> For the record, I'm a full time teacher trained in software development, so my time is limited, but I tend to find time for interesting/worthwhile projects

<ozope> Same

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<richardb> I also hope to have a student IT intern next year who I hope to get to write documentation for any edu-plone system

<georgP> back again

<ozope> excellent Richard!

<waz> I'd like to know the authors/title of NZ papers that deal with Plone and related standards. are there many richard?

<georgP> i have to leave to a meeting in some minutes, but the chat programm will "listen" to your discussion

<richardb> To my knowledge Plone hasn't splashed in NZ yet. Government is giving lots of money to Microsoft for liscences to schools for lots of their software

<richardb> This is making it hard for opensource here I think

<richardb> Also the school administration system market is tied up by a single company whose best interests are served in making it incompatable with any standards

<georgP> may i have the email-addresses of those who would like to be directly informed about future steps? contact for eduplone is: jodok.batogg@eduplone.net

<waz> so the funding for e-learning initiatives, in NZ is not yet directed at research and plone in e-learning?

<richardb> They then produce connected software like library modules because they make it hard to interface with other systems

<richardb> No research in that direction as far as I'm aware

<ozope> There is obviously a case to be capitalised on.

<richardb> What is the market like in Oz

<georgP> ok, thanks for the first contact and information exchange! have to leave now, looking forward to some future cooperation. bye and greetings from austria

<richardb> Nice meeting you georg

<ozope> There is now discussion on the zope 3 sprint coming up in Melbourne.

<waz> market is un-aggregated

<ozope> vielen dank!

<ozope> Exciting times!

<richardb> yes, very exciting. I have been following Zope for a while, but Plone is the first product that I think has a chance in the school environment

<waz> i'd like to support anyone in Melbourne who'd like to present at navon in chch

<waz> Richard, are there any people in Australia you can suggest I contact?

<richardb> Sorry, I couldn't make it to the last conference, but have a look at the NavCon 2K3 site and there might be a few names you recognise

<waz> will do.

<richardb> OZZOPE, sorry I missed you previous question. We use MUSAC which is made in NZ for NZ only

<ozope> Richard are you connected at all with any open source groups in NZ?

<richardb> not directly, I'm just getting back into this sort of thing

<richardb> I know there is a group that is doing PHP stuff, but I personally don't see much of a future in PHP for high quality supportable software

<richardb> or maybe I've looked at the wrong stuff

<ozope> osv.org.au is a great group and have an active and informative mailing list which I suggest you join.

<richardb> thanks

<ozope> I'm sure they would have contacts in NZ

<waz> to join osv, email conz@cyber.com.au, say you participated in OzZope meeting re eduplone, mention Warren Crosbie, Jan Smith, Kevin Littlejohn.

<richardb> thanks waz

<richardb> Who is Kevin?

<ozope> We are now discussing computer bank. Waz have you a link?

<waz> hang. on

<ozope> axxs.org/computerbank_doc

<waz> Kevin is from obsidian.com.au

<waz> computerbank_doc is a Silva project, Dave & Jan help to build.

<waz> Jan has contact in Rotterdam

<waz> Jan collaborates to help, infrae, the developers write documentation.

<richardb> Does anyone else here use mIRC?

<richardb> Is there a way of getting a log of this discussion My client does not let me do it.

<ozope> It will be published on ozzope, is my understanding.

<richardb> Thanks

<richardb> I've got to go now (midnight here). Thanks for all the discussion and all the help.

<waz> cheers

<ozope> It's great to have a chat with you Richard, looking forward to all the possibilities.

<richardb> Yes, as you said, very exciting!

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<waz> where outohere in 2 or 3 minutes.

I am writing to introduce you to the Children's Internet Gateway Project 
(www.opensourcearmenia.com/gateway).   Our goal is to create a Web portal for 
kids by using open-source tools.  A number of portals for kids exist out 
there.  But we want something 
a) that is open-source; 
b) that kids can participate in making; 
c) that will be available in Armenian, too (and yes, most of us are 
Armenians :)).

We'd like that portal to be a fun place, and one of the things we're hoping 
to accomplish is to build a game-making environment, using Python.  Does 
anybody know if there are efforts in that direction (i.e. Python game-making 
software)?

We are using Plone (and Zope, and Python) to build the portal.  We have 
produced (and are continuing work on) an Armenian localization for Plone 
(test site at http://spi.zoper.com/tziatzan) as a part of this effort.  

Another thing we're doing is making a prototypical school intranet (for 
schools in Armenia, again) -- and lobbying with the various schools/NGOs/the 
government  (not all schools have computers, let alone a computer network) to 
try these out.  If anyone has recommendations about nice educational intranet 
portals, we'd love to hear them.  (I have wound a few school and college 
sites that use Plone -- even UCL! -- most agreeable.)

This project received some funding from the Open Source Armenia, and is 
staffed by volunteer effort.  There are kids and adults collaborating on this 
(online); one project team is located in the small town of Spitak, Armenia 
(www.spitux.org), and then there are some people in the capital of Armenia, 
and finally, a few of us here in Boston.

We'd be happy to hear from you -- if you'd like to help us out with any 
comments or suggestions, or point us to your favorite kids' sites, or 
features, or anything, really.  Write to us, or visit our forum at: 
http://www.opensourcearmenia.com/Projects/gateway/forum

Best regards,

--
Anoush Najarian

The SpiTux Project:
http://www.spitux.org
2003 LinuxFund.org Grant
Children's Internet Gateway Project
http://opensourcearmenia.com/Projects/gateway
Plone Armenian l10n Test Site
http://spi.zoper.com/tziatzan
TuxType Armenian Theme
http://opensourcearmenia.com/Projects/Tuxtype

Email: a.najarian-fOdFMYwuEsI@public.gmane.org
URL: 
http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~najarian