2.3.4 POOL (The Portal for Online Objects in Learning) 

Lead 

Simon Fraser University 

Origin Canada 

Background 

POOL is a consortium of Canadian educators private and public sector organisations who are working 

together to create the Portal for Online Objects for Learning (POOL). We are funded in part by the 

CANARIE E Learning Program. POOL, POND and SPLASH is the metaphor we use to describe our 

architecture   SPLASH is for individuals, POND is for communities, and POOL Central is a way to speed up 

and hasten the search process.  

The partners in POOL are: NewMIC   the New Media Innovation Centre Foundation in Vancouver is a non 

profit research and development centre for high tech media; TL NCE   the TeleLearning Network of 

Centres of Excellence is a national network of researchers looking into technology and education; TechBC 

  the Technical University of British Columbia, the technical lead of POOL, POND and SPLASH; NBDEN   

the New Brunswick Distance Education Network runs TeleCampus, the worlds largest portal to online 

courses; UNB   the Electronic Text Centre at the University of New Brunswick, a main developer of the 

IMS conformant CanCore metadata profile; TelesTraining Inc.  is a private sector developer and trainer for 

on line learning; C2T2   BC s Centre for Curriculum, Transfer and Technology; OLA   BC s Open Learning 

Agency 

URL http://www.edusplash.net/default.asp?page=Home 

Aims and 

SPLASH uses "peer to peer" technology so every user can have their own mini repository on their 

Objectives 

computer, but these are all linked together so you can search all the POOL sites from your SPLASH 

application. 

We address the issues of building such architectures including the metadata, software and hardware 

considerations and bootstrapping the system with initial content; 

Metadata 

CanCore 

Standards 

Content 

(unable to find information at time of writing 

Packaging 

Page 26 of 84