Re: [seul-edu] wikis in education (was: SEUL/edu wiki test)

[Bruno Vernier <vernier@vc.bc.ca>]

On Fri, Jan 19, 2001 at 09:23:01AM +0000, Gunnar Stefansson wrote:

> Basically, I would like a program which works like a wiki except on
> very structured content.  Rather than the one sandbox window I believe 
> we need several smaller windows:  One for the title, one for the main
> slide text, one for footnote-style text, one for detailed additional
> information, one for the quiz question and one for each possible
> answer to the quiz.  And this is just for a single slide - they need
> to be categorized into lectures and courses.
> 
> Can this be done using existing stuff?

yes.

I already did this last year in may.  http://ess.vancouver.bc.ca/zope/math

and http://ess.vancouver.bc.ca/zope/math/tests

Let me explain why I went on to the wiki format (BTW both formats live well
side by side)

After pushing and studying XML (highly structured documents) for 2 years, an
idea came to me:

what if we made a loose version of xml?  

One very important reason for
HTML's success and acceptance is that it comes in two flavors:  loose and
formal.  Loose HTML is ideal for humans and the popular browsers are
designed to handle the looseness and make good guesses at what the humans
intended.  Meanwhile the average human HTML author can put something half
decent up in very little time.

I designed eduml-wiki for us humans; it is loose xml with lots of easy
shortcuts for humans.... the result is nonetheless convertible into formal
XML for communications between programs and machines.

So yes, we can (and I have) created forms which force humans to enter
information in strictly enforced boxes, using the traditional data entry
paradigm.  At the same time, we can enter the same information in 
"post-it notes" style, on the fly, keeping the familiar text processing 
paradigm.

Bruno