Adding semantics to online learning environments

Semantic Web is the next big thing on the Internet. It implies the general movement towards standardization and machine processable Web information. As a part of this new wave, Microformats appear as the link between present and future Web. They are the lower case semantic Web, dedicated to both humans and machines. We used Microformats in the distance learning center portal for encoding information related to staff, students, events and audio/ video material. We chose an open source software, operator, as the tool we needed for the detection and processing of the implemented microformats: hCard, hCalendar and hAudio. The proposed approach is currently being tested with the fourth year students.