Other systems

Interesting systems

A list of systems that have interesting features or solutions.

• Connexions: (http://cnx.rice.edu) is a Plone based platform for authoring and using LOs (mainly text medium). It has some interesting features, such as versioning of LOs, customization of LOs in the context of a course, etc. And it's released as open source.
• Pachyderm: (http://www.pachyderm.org/) is an open source authoring environment for creators of web-based and multimedia learning experiences. It is currently under developmemt and will be released in fall 2005.
• LAMS: (http://www.lamsfoundation.org/) is an open source system for authoring and playing learning activity flows. Jan has made a document that describes LAMS and given an easy analysis on how we can use ideas from LAMS to create templates. Se attached file "LAMS \u2013 an introduction.doc"
• MERLOT: (http://www.merlot.org) learning material referratory and online community. Read a description of collaboration tools in MERLOT.
• Collection of educational Plone products
• GoZip: EduPlone has developed an export mechanism that support IMS Content Packaging. It is a modified ATContentTypes and there are some rumours that it can pollute a Plone installation. However, it looks interesting as we maybe want to export modules as IMS Content Packages.
• LatexWiki is the closest Plone/Zope/Python product that allows producing math symbols inline. It will get complicated anyway, as math symbols are created as images by necessity and images are stored with page object. This would also add LaTeX engine and Ghostscript to installation requirements.
• Ecto is a LMS for teachers and students that focuses on freedom and collaborative pedagogy, and in many ways similar to LeMill.

Interfaces

A list of systems that provide interfaces or APIs that we should consider implementing.

• Amazon's OpenSearch API at http://a9.com - see OpenSearch submission guidelines
• http://flickr.com contains images with folksonomies, also CC-lisenced stuff
• http://del.icio.us contains links with folksonomies
• Google API
• http://www.ourmedia.org/ provides CC-licensed media. See also their Ourmedia in the Classroom project.
• http://www.soundclick.com is a repository of (CC-licensed) music and sound clips
• http://creativecommons.org
• On instant messaging and VOIP: XMPP is an open standard, and supported by Jabber, Google Talk and others. Maybe we need some integration of IM/VOIP to our Toolbox?
• http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/ is an open API for people to reuse BBC material
• Open Access: Scientific publications can also be accessed and used openly
• Yahoo Python Developer Center: Accessing the Yahoo API with Python

User Interfaces

A list of clever user interface technologies and some examples - please add here more.

Technologies

• Ajax programming - Asynchronous Java Script and XML for programming web interfaces.
• Macromedia Flash - Multimedia authoring program and player that can be used to program the user interface.
• http://www.microsoft.com/uk/office/project/prodinfo/overview.mspx - Project planning and tracking software. Interface of Gantt chart can be used on activity planning (see example on attachment)
• http://www.openlaszlo.org/ - OpenLaszlo?! We need to use this at least because of the name! :)
• http://news.com.com/Congress+readies+new+digital+copyright+bill/2100-1028_3-6064016.html?tag=nefd.top - news.com.com has a cool news map (on the right side of the page) (and this news item is also somewhat interesting)

Examples

• The Big Picture - Cnet news visualization of news topics and how they are connected.
• Think Map Visual Thesaurus - Thinkmap products exampple of 3D interactive reference tool.
• Geolocator - Browsing repository based on where the content comes geographically.
• Shop by colour Browisng repository based on the content's colour.
• Time machine - Browing repository based on when the content was put into it.
• Tag Cloud - Simple idea to visualize the "popularity" of tags.
• Slidy - A slideshow done in completely standard XHTML and javascript.