Since before this project started we have been following the development of the H5P OER Hub which has great promise to be an ultimate source of sharing and finding reusable H5P content, easily accessible from within the H5P tools.
We were fortunate to have a preview of this in October 2020 when we had “Top Chef” Svein-Tore Griff With, founder of H5P, here in the H5P Kitchen.
As of today, the OER Hub is 98% done. It is currently available in drupal and Moodle hosts of H5P, but not quite yet for WordPress, and thus Pressbooks.
Soon we hope!
But thanks to Yasin Dahi who made an offer in the H5P Kitchen Mattermost (look, a reason why all the cool H5P kids should be there), I was able to get an account on the H5P service he is building out at learnful.ca which, being drupal based, meant I can see and show you how the OER Hub will work.
I started by exporting an .h5p content file for a hot spot activity created here for our post on Meeting Up With H5P Metadata.
After creating a new H5P or importing one as I did, one sees in the interface a new option for H5P after the ones we typically see (“View”, “Edit”, and “Results”) — one labeled “Share”
Next, you see 1 of 3 form fields for adding more metadata to your item. It will bring across Title, Author, and licenses if it existed from the H5P.
The second screen provides additional metadata used in the Hub.
The choices for Dicsipline come from a fixed list, but it is pretty extensive. I chose “Educational Technology”. The keywords, however, are open ended tags, so if you were working on a project or for an organization, you can add identifying keywords to help group related content in the Hub. So I added a tag for h5pkitchen (because I could).
Adding short and long descriptions will help others who find it in the hub better understand the purpose, and as well, I added our logo as an icon, and a few screenshots. These are optional, but see below how they come into play.
Before sharing, you can review all of the information- note that it si clear that it can be updated later if needed.
After sharing, I get my confirmation.
There is some review process, as it took maybe a day for my first test to show up via a search.
After your item has been shared, note that in the H5P system we are in, you have no options to edit the sharing metadata or to unshare the item (remove from the hub).
That’s the steps for sharing content into the Hub. But the real value we see is that once the Hub is well populated, you may not have to try and search for H5P content all over the internet. There is a new option in the H5P authoring interface where typically you pick a tool or upload a file, you see a new option- Get Shared Content.
All of those metadata fields used when sharing content, allows a means now to find content- by discipline, license, language, level, etc. Let’s find some cooking stuff!
I found this nifty Kitchen Tools quiz created by Keewaytinook Internet High School. If I click “Get Content” then a copy is downloaded and made available for me to use, modify right there in my H5P editing space.
I will note that none of the metadata came with this, likely it was not in the original? (this preview link may or may not work). Nope, as often happens, the original H5P lacks full metadata. So it would be on me when I remix, to go in, and add credit.
As I do.
Metadata is what makes the search things work and also create an environment of gratitude by acknowledging our sources. But never seems to get respect or even attention.
But I digress.
Hopefully you can appreciate now how the H5P Content Hub will work. And it will work best of you share your stuff.
We are eager to see it make those last few percents of work to update the WordPress plugin, and then it can be made available in Pressbooks.
If you want to try this test site that Yasin shared, message him over in our Mattermost space (@ymdahi).
UPDATE: Yasin says just jump in!
The Hub is happening!
Image Credit: Kitchen Hub flickr photo by Electrolux Design Lab shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license modified by Alan Levine to include the H5P logo and a screenshot of the H5P hub interface.
