the Design Experience Weblog Archive

With the Xpath based weblog software Syncato you can include content from the database is a post using an Xpath query. This is a really great idea and definitely encourage semantically rich text content. I am still trying to understand what all this might mean. Of course, I could build the ability to execute a SQL query in OpenACS content, which would be a similar results. What is neat is the consistency of how everything XML fits together. In the context of a corporate-wide knowledge management system, it doesn't seem it would scale, but who knows. No matter what the idea is very interesting.

The Hudson Valley Ramble is a way to explore the Hudson River. Over 100 guided tours are available September 20-21, 2003. (Too bad the main page is a useless Java splashpage, and the inside pages have no titles)

More from elearnspace blog, What's a good learning community wonders about how to create a good learning environment. He shows a bullet list of features of such an environment.

How should learning environments be structured? Some thoughts (apply to both physical and digital environments):


* A space for gurus and beginners to connect (provide mentorship)
* A space for self-expression (blog)
* A space for debate and dialogue (discussion forum/listserv)
* A space to search for archived knowledge
* A space to learn in a structured manner (tutorials)

I got thinking of how the OpenACS developer community is structured.

Here is how the community addresses these items:

* #openacs irc channel
* some developers have weblogs on their sites, none offered at openacs.org yet
* openacs.org discussion forums
* not much here, many documents on individual hacker web sites, could be a wiki?
* OpenACS documentation, some docs on various individual web sites

The Technology Source has an interview with Clark Aldrich author of Simulations and the Future of Learning: An Innovative (and Perhaps Revolutionary) Approach to e-Learning. The interview and the book discuss ways to _use_ simulations in learning, which is interesting, and definitely a step in the right direction.

What if the learner actually created the simulation. This seems like a much more productive environment for gaining insight. Alan Kay has been thinking about this for 30 years or so. Along with others he has been trying this out on real learners. Computers are powerful enough now that we can start to do some interesting things with them. [Link from elearnspace blog]

The irc weblog that uses the Daily Chump Bot to collect output is now managed by an instance of the OpenACS package lars-blogger. That makes it much easier to search and integrate into this web site. http://www.thedesignexperience.org/openacs/ircblog/

All the old links to the content should still work. Also it generates RSS for free. Previously I was using XSLT to transform the xml files into HTML and RSS.

Klockwerks, unique timepieces designed by Roger Wood. They are definitely unique. I wish I could describe them better, just go look.

OpenACS has an automated testing package, and finally some developers are supporting its use.
Simon Carstensen has written up a little tutorial on writing the test code. I think this is a great idea, especially when extending existing code, you can re-run the tests to see if you have broken anything critical.

Over at cyberdash.com is an interesting post about weblogs gaining course management features. The article says that probably a more complete content management platform with add course management features. This is interesting to me, of course, because OpenACS already has a nice course management applicaiton called dotLRN, but is still in search of a nice content management addition. The author is only aware of two systems that allow users to have individual weblogs. dotLRN 2.0 should also have this feature. OpenACS already supports weblogs alongside its other community building features.

Allen Holub has a great series of articles on Object Oriented Design over at JavaWorld.com. Why extends is evil and Why getter and setter methods are evil discuss ways to improve the design of OO software. I wish I understood more of this, but I get a feeling he really knows what he is talking about.

A full list of Allen's articles at JavaWorld is available also.

Listamtic takes the best of CSS list formatting ideas from around the web and shows them off. It is a great idea, and you can do some amazing things using CSS and lists. Especially nice is the browser support matrix, showing the support for each technique in major browsers. Link from Column Two.

dotLRN, the course management system built on OpenACS was ranked in the top 5 in a report commissioned by the Commonwealth of Learning. It looks like they were predisposed to PHP systems, as one of the criteria was ability to extend the API with PHP. The evalualtion of course management systems is online. Thanks to EdTechPost.

Test

I wanted to ping technorati in addition to weblogs.com. The blogger package I am using only has space for one ping recipient, so I had to fix that. This post hopefully will let me know if it worked. Darn, testing again.

Shortly after my user interface discovery, I looked up. It was a little cloudy, but there was a very bright moon, and a star or planet or something a little to the left, the two brightest objects in the sky. Checking a sky alamanac, I am guessing it was Mars.

So, I'm out walking the dog while waiting for WindowsME to reinstall itself on my friends' computer and I am thinking about the evolution of the Windows user interface, in particular, the new task-based UI in Windows XP and how some of the changes exist in WindowsME. An idea pops into me head. Task-based user interfaces are great for beginners, but completely useless if you need to do anything the designer didn't think of. Now this isn't so bad by itself, because the option you need does exist in some menu somewhere. The problem is that task-based user interfaces offload even more processing, or thinking, from the user. In many cases we end up with users who have very little understanding of how they caused a computer to complete a task, and very little chance they could repeat it.

There exists, in learning theory, a concept of low-threshhold, high or even no-ceiling. That is, it is easy to get started, but the sky's the limit on what you can do. With current computer technology, the only no-ceiling technology is a programming language. Doesn't matter which one, if you are talking about no-ceiling. Most people agree that what is commonly though of as programming is rarely low-threshold. That's not a problem, there are plenty of GUI applications that can do the thinking for you to get you started. The missing piece this the transition layer. I have absolutely no idea how to solve this. As far as I know, the people working on this type of problem has much more experience than me, and still are just thinking about the different ways to solve this.

One aspect of a transition from low-threshold to high-ceiling applications resides in more human side of the equation. Basically many people are afraid to try things. If something doesn't do what they expect, or they are not sure what to do next, they freeze. The simple difference i have seen between people who feel comfortable with computers and technology and those who do not is the willingness to experiment. A computer is usually a pretty good place to experiment, you can't actually break anything, you might erase your work, but you can probably do that by mistake anyway. This concept has also been discussed many times before. I do try to explain that I don't have any magic powers to anyone who is surpirsed by my ability to find the little secret to fix their computer problem. I just explain that I just keep clicking until something interesting happens.

I really appreciate NPR for its musical coverage. I listened to NPR about 2 years ago for awhile, fascinated by the little clips of music between the stories on All Things Considered. The variery was very interesting. I imagined it would be really nice if they told what those clips were on the web site. Eventually I forgot about it. I started listening again about a year ago, and I heard a mention of All Songs Considered. Besides listing the clips between the stories, they now have an online music show.

Today I heard a great interview with John Mayer on All Things Considered. Rarely do news shows have such fun interviews with musicians talking about and playing songs from their new albums. I will definitely be checking out more of John Mayer right after I install the Flash Plugin. Hmmm, complaining about musicians web sites being flash-only is a subject for another post.

Update: Looks like everyons else already knows about him! His unreleased album (goes on sale tomorrow) is #3 sales rank at Amazon.com. Well I still like it :) Hey I like Norah Jones too, although the free tracks for download from her web site from the House of Blue are much better than the flat production on her album. Even if I have been living under a rock, check out the Music Buttons over at All Songs Considered for an actual wide range of music.

I was thinking about the future when WiFi or some other network technology is available everywhere, when you only need one device that works on The Network. So I did a Google search for free wifi community stuff and here are some links:

* http://www.freenetworks.org/
* http://www.nodedb.com/
* http://nycwireless.net/ (I really like the design)

Jay Cross comments on a survey about personalization in e-learning. He talks about customizing the learing experience for individual learners based on their knowledge. He also mentions the ability to share notes and allow collaboration. Hopefully dotLRN and related packages can offer this type of experience. OpenACS was build for customization, personalization, collaboration, and community.

Adaptive Path is offering downloads of usability resources from their workshops. This includes " the tools, deliverables, and documentation templates" used. I haven't had a chance to check it out, but it seems like a great resource. From [Column Two]

Over at Weblogg-Ed is a post about Manila as CMS, which can mean Content or Course Management system. Will R. says that Manila is nice because you can buy it for $299, or rent a hosted solution from several vendors. He notes that he hasn't heard of a comparable service using Open Source CMS.

Course/Content management for schools is an interesting area, and I think dotLRN with an improved content management component might work well. It would be great if multiple schools could be hosted within one instance of dotLRN, but I don't think the code is quite there to allow that yet. One thing dotLRN is good at is decentralization of administration of online course content.

I don't know if a hosted dotLRN service would be profitable, but it might break even, and that would be good marketing at least.

Matthew Miller's books The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America's Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love was mentioned on NPR this morning in an interview. Miller introduces a concept he calls "Still True Today" that major newspapers would publish daily on the fron page. It would remind those of problems that still exist in the US such as the number of unisured. I had a wacky idea to scrape the appropriate US web sites for statistics and generate an RSS feed. So far I have found one page for health insurace at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/hinsure.htm. There is a portal for US statistics at http://www.fedstats.gov/.