[seul-edu] [Fwd: Courseware XML]

[Doug Loss <drloss@home.com>]

owner-seul-edu@seul.org wrote:

> From: Bruno Vernier <vernier@vc.bc.ca>
> To: seul-edu@seul.org
> Subject: Courseware XML
>
>
> Doug wrote:
> > Interesting you should ask!  Look on our projects page
> > <http://www.seul.org/projects.html> for EduML.  Bruno Vernier did a good
> > deal of work on this a while ago, but I'm not sure of it's status at the moment.
> > The last thing I remember hearing was some thoughts abouteither making it
> > compatible with, or developing a translator to, the SIF format that most of the
> > commercial educational software vendors were pushing.  Bruno, what can you tell us
> > vis-a-vis EduML?
>
> See Doug, I still do read seul-edu!
>
> Although I have not done the SIF format yet,  I have been working
> particularly hard and efficiently on a cutting-edge courseware application.
>
> This is an outgrowth of the EDUML project.  I became influenced by Frances
> Long who convinced me of the importance of conferencing as a serious teaching
> medium; I had until then been focussing only on sequencing and automating
> tutorial matter and corresponding quizzes.
>
> I realized that I could automate courses but they could never be anything
> more than training courses and I really want to be into whole mind
> education.
>
> The training part is still there but since
> the beginnning of this year I have been working on the conferencing
> (dialogue) aspect.  I've made it easy to (optionally) mark (and
> automatically update report cards) student postings and provide weights to
> different topics... thus completely automating marking for courses that have
> a dialogue component (i.e. making the marking of short paragraphs fun and
> fruitful)
>
> This is still open source work and the source is at
> http://ess.vancouver.bc.ca/bruno/eduml  and currently requires zope and
> postgresql plus a few other optional packages.  If you really want to see this
> stuff in action though, please email me and I will provide you with a URL
> and login to watch my classes in action.
>
> I use this is in a mixed environment, meaning where students sometimes come
> to class (some once a year, some all the time, most, some of the time) and
> the rest do their work online from home or wherever they have internet access.
>
> I also use XML in creative (probably un-intended) ways as short cuts to
> providing powerful features in postings and wikipages:  for example
> <visitors> automatically renders as a counter with a history of who visited
> and did what to a posting or a wikipage.
>
> Bruno
>
> p.s. but yes, eventually, I hope to make this work IMS-compliant and maybe
> SIF-compliant too.  I believe deeply in XML standards for education.




--
Doug Loss                 Always do right.  This
Data Network Coordinator  will gratify some people
Bloomsburg University     and astonish the rest.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Mark Twain