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Lessons from use of Collaboration Systems in Education and Training
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We give some technical and methodological lessons from use of TangoInteractive in a variety of distance learning scenarios including ongoing teaching at Jackson State Miss. from Syracuse and the Saturday Java Academy offered to middle and high school students in Boston, Houston, Starkville and Syracuse.
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1) Integration of synchronous and asynchronous modes is simply addressed by using web-based material which can either by directly mounted or made available through web-linked databases or server backend scripts as in NCSA's Biology Workbench.
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2) Importance of an underlying document object model which allows sharing of material in a way that respects both the profile of the user and the structure of the data. We show how this can be used to provide cross disability interfaces.
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3) Detailed analysis of TangoInteractive's shared JavaScript model as used today shows strengths and weaknesses of current W3C proposed DOM. We suggest changes based on a shared layer using XML and JavaScript, which appear sufficient to provide universal access to education.
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4)we note that it appears easier to provide cross disability interfaces to web material respecting the W3C DOM than to general Java applets and similar high end authoring systems which lack constraints of a DOM.
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5) We discuss implications for role of Professor/Teacher as lecturer and Mentor
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This work uses Alliance applications (Biology), EOT Partners(including Trace Center and users) and Alliance Technology (TangoInteractive)
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Links Interactive (synchronous) and self-paced (asynchronous) collaborative models
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Integration of the Best of Web Browsing, Lotus Notes, CUSeeMe
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Runs on Windows 95,98,NT UNIX (Irix, Solaris, Linux)
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Supports multi-language shared server and client applications in Java, Javabeans, C++ and JavaScript (W3C DOM)
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Supplement existing very general tools (audio-video conferencing, chats, whiteboard etc.) by specialized applications to support particular collaborative activities
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Education and Training: support completely particular course development models
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Management: Distance Briefings
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Research: Custom link to particular Environments
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Upgrade core technology in areas such as browser independence, security, multiple community support, archiving
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Improve User Support and documentation
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Outside Index
Summary of Material
Denote Foils where Image Critical
Denote Foils where Image has important information
Denote Foils where HTML is sufficient
