Toolkits
OLE has defined three toolkits that will be created as deployable packages making use of the services provided in the OLE technical architecture. These are the OLE Knowledge Toolkit, the OLE Community Toolkit, and the OLE Sustainability Toolkit. For a more detailed explanation from a technical point of view, please read our Overview of the OLE Technical Architecture document written by our CTO Charlie Kohl.
OLE Knowledge Toolkit
The OLE Knowledge Toolkit provides support for the development, storage, and use of the educational resources available through the Billion Kids Library (BKL - an open global repository of all educational resources available to the OLE community) and the National Kids Libraries (NKLs -filtered views of the BKL providing access to resources appropriate to a particular OLE organization). This toolkit provides mechanisms for: finding resources; creating resources; delivering and using the resources; evaluating resources; analyzing the usage of resources; and localizating, versioning and archiving those resources.
OLE Community Toolkit
The OLE Community Toolkit provides support for “learning communities” utilizing the OLE tools for individual or group educational activities. The toolkit includes: documentation of best practices; teacher training materials; discovery tools for finding other members or groups; and membership management, group management, and collaboration tools to support online group collaboration. These collaboration tools are all open source third-party modules supporting shared calendars, RSS feeds, text messaging, voice communication, blogs, forums, shared documents, and shared whiteboards or desktops.
OLE Sustainability Toolkit
The OLE Sustainability Toolkit packages a set of tools supporting the creation, growth, and management of OLE Centers throughout the world. The services provided through this toolkit can either be run on the servers of the OLE Secretariat or on local servers managed by an individual OLE Center. The toolkit provides a generic “out-of-the-box” website, communication and collaboration tools, fundraising tools, analytic tools, and best practices documentation for the management of an OLE Center. As with the Community Toolkit, the modules provided in this toolkit are largely existing packages developed by the open source community.
