Tools

To assist stakeholders involved in applying standards and specifications for learning technologies, ASPECT is providing a new set of tools and support services that will facilitate the interoperability of learning content.

Tools developed in the project can be accessed below. Later this year, the project will also launch a Service Centre that provides the following services:

• Identity service (based on the handle)
• Metadata translation service
• Metadata transformation service
• Metadata validation service
• Vocabulary Bank for Education
• Learning Object Repository registry (early prototype)
• Harvesting back service

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ASPECT Test System

The ASPECT Test System allows you to test xml files for compliance with the Learning Resource Exchange Metadata Application Profile Version 4.0”. Please download the version appropriate for your operating system from the list above and unzip it. The unzipped directory, at the top level, will contain the test system which you launch using a current Java Runtime Environment. After launching the test system, determine in the Configuration tab the directory where the reports should be saved. At the Test Packages tab, Add the instance documents you intend to Validate. For more information, please see the ASPECT Deliverable 3.2.1 

Content Package Referencer Tool - New Versions!

ContentPackageReferencer¹ was developed at the University of Koblenz-Landau, Knowledge Media Institute, for testing content packages for wrong references. It inserts missing file references in a content package manifest file and warns the user if a file does exist in the references of the manifest file but not in the content package. The tool also allows you to pretty print² the manifest files in your content packages. ContentPackageReferencer is published under the Creative Commons³ License.

How does it work?

The referencing procedure is realized in three steps:

• Firstly the existing references in the manifest file are checked against all files in the package and a list of missing files is generated. The missing references are inserted as new resource tags into the manifest file.
• Secondly the existing references in the manifest file are checked against all files in the package and a list of all files that do exist in the manifest file but not in the content package is generated. The superfluous files are not deleted from the manifest file by default, because this could destroy references in the organizations part of the manifest file.
• Nevertheless you receive at least a warning that contains all invalid files. The tool allows you to delete all of the invalid resource or file tags by using a special option that is described in more detail in the next sections. If you only want to delete some of the tags, please do this manually.

Besides repairing broken references ContentPackageReferencer is able to print the manifest files of content packages in a indented and line-wrapped way. You can either choose to repair content packages (the pretty printing of the manifest files is included in this) or not to repair content packages but to pretty print their manifest files.

The actual version of ContentPackageReferencer is able to work in command line mode (for Windows, Linux and Mac) or in graphical user interface mode (only for Windows). For detailed information download the documentation.

Download the new version of tools:
Referencer for Win32
Referencer for Win64
Referencer for Win/Linux/Mac command line version

Content Package Referencer Documentation

¹ The development of ContentPackageReferencer was carried out in the context of the Aspect Project, which is supported in part by the European Union, contract ECP 417008.
² Pretty printing means printing the manifest file with indentation and line-wrapping so that it is better readable.
³ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/legalcode