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Basic foilset Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning

Given by Geoffrey C. Fox at FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web on 8 October 99. Foils prepared 10 October 99
Outside Index Summary of Material

We discuss the use of XML to set "permanent" and pragmatic local standards in a world moving with Internet Time
We use an example of a set of simple quizzes to both illustrate XML and its use to save content produced originally from a Java applet
We give other examples of XML to specify database access
We define the two important API's -- client and backend -- and suggest generic (broader than education) and education specific objects where XML is relevant
We suggest a model for a new type of "Portal building Tool"
We described SPW(Shared Portal on the Web) as an XML based collaborative Portal

Table of Contents for full HTML of Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning

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1 Some Uses of XML in Distance Learning Florida State University Symbolic Notations on the Web Consensus Workshop Tallahassee October 8 1999
2 Abstract: XML and Education Standards
3 Standards and XML I
4 Standards and XML II
5 XML and Other Object Models I
6 Databases versus XML?
7 XML and Other Object Models II
8 Basic Multi Tier architecture
9 A Custom Java Applet for Quizzes(6 problems)
10 Sample XML for one type of quiz
11 Fragment of NPAC Education XML DTD
12 Re-usable Education Object Strategy
13 Some General Objects of Importance to Education
14 (Education) Portal Building Model
15 General Object Descriptors of Interest to Education II
16 Database Access XML Templates -- Example I
17 Database Access XML Templates -- Example II
18 General Object Descriptors of Interest to Education III
19 Education Specific Objects
20 Some Important Education Services/Tools
21 Collaboration and Portals
22 Shared Portal on the Web
23 A Collection of Shared Place Components
24 SPDL Example: Declare Shared Portal Objects
25 Another Example of SPDL: Define User Roles

Outside Index Summary of Material

HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 1 Some Uses of XML in Distance Learning Florida State University Symbolic Notations on the Web Consensus Workshop Tallahassee October 8 1999

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
Geoffrey Fox
Syracuse University
NPAC
111 College Place Syracuse NY 13244 4100
3154432163
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 2 Abstract: XML and Education Standards

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
We discuss the use of XML to set "permanent" and pragmatic local standards in a world moving with Internet Time
We use an example of a set of simple quizzes to both illustrate XML and its use to save content produced originally from a Java applet
We give other examples of XML to specify database access
We define the two important API's -- client and backend -- and suggest generic (broader than education) and education specific objects where XML is relevant
We suggest a model for a new type of "Portal building Tool"
We described SPW(Shared Portal on the Web) as an XML based collaborative Portal
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 3 Standards and XML I

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
So we wish to move ahead and enter a world moving with Internet Speed ...
But neither us nor the world we move in knows quite what we want to do
We need to set standards so that our infrastructure and content can be largely reused
If we start now with public domain or commercial systems like "mine", "yours", WebCT, Blackboard, CAPA then how can we do this so can evolve as technology changes
We could ask system provider to support "standards" but this is not very helpful if standards are insufficient
Educause IMS (www.imsproject.org) and IEEE P1484 are working on standards (which will be expressed in XML) but currently they seem far from being sufficient.
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 4 Standards and XML II

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
So we need to agree on an "architecture" and decide where the "sweet spots" are to define standards
  • i.e. you do not agree on standards but do try to agree (or guess) what entities will have standards defined for them in the future
So assume that we are building education portals in terms of "Distributed Educational Objects" -- this is not really an assumption but a statement as to "language used"
Then standards define interfaces to objects (methods and properties)
XML is useful as a flexible way of specifying object interfaces in a convenient user readable way supported by growing number of tools
  • Internet Explorer 5 renders XML
  • Many Java libraries for processing XML
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 5 XML and Other Object Models I

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
There are several important Object Models: COM, CORBA, Java, Web, Oracle Database ......
So XML Web pages are natural XML specified objects but you can use XML as
  • export of an Oracle database
XML File System (Web Site)
Or Equivalently
Middle Tier (Java Servlet) dissociates User and Back End
Export/Import
Request
Information
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 6 Databases versus XML?

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
The XML File <machines domain="npac" type="pc" > <machine os="nt" cpu="pentium2" memory="128" >maryland</machine> <machine os="nt" cpu="pentium3" memory="256" >georgia</machine> <machine os="95" cpu="mmx" memory="128" >foxport1</machine> ..... </machines> <machines domain="cis" > <machine os="solaris" cpu="sparcXX" >top</machine> ..... </machines>
is equivalent to database tables such as
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 7 XML and Other Object Models II

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
COM and CORBA define their interfaces in a specialized IDL (Interface Definition Language)
Java defines its object interfaces in terms of Java the language
But it does not matter if object is in text file, C (accessed via CORBA or COM), Oracle, Java or JavaScript; one can define interface in XML and map to particular realization
So XML is Universal Object Specification
  • it may or may not be preferred object implementation
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 8 Basic Multi Tier architecture

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
Two Sweet Spots for defining Interfaces
Educational Objects can be stored in Databases, Web Sites etc.
Broker or Server
XML
Result
XML Query
Rendering Engine
Browser
Rendering Engine
HTML
Universal Interfaces
IDL or Templates
XML Request for service
followed by return of XML result
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 9 A Custom Java Applet for Quizzes(6 problems)

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 10 Sample XML for one type of quiz

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
< npaceducationxml > <question questionID="0000005">
  • <timeInMinɬ</timeInMin>
  • <timeInSecᡖ</timeInSec>
  • <text>Which of the following are control structures?</text>
  • <multipleChoice>
    • <option>while</option>
    • <option>if-then-else</option>
    • <option>class</option>
    • <option>switch</option>
    • <option>public</option>
    • <correctAnswer>while</correctAnswer>
    • <correctAnswer>if-then-else</correctAnswer>
    • <correctAnswer>switch</correctAnswer>
  • </multipleChoice>
</question> </ npaceducationxml>
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 11 Fragment of NPAC Education XML DTD

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
<!ELEMENT npaceducationxml (quiz+, lecture+, author+, course+) >
<!ELEMENT quiz (question)+>
<!ATTLIST quiz quizID ID #REQUIRED
authorID IDREF #REQUIRED
courseID IDREF #REQUIRED
lectureID IDREF #REQUIRED>
<!ELEMENT author (name, email+, institution)>
<!ATTLIST author authorID ID #REQUIRED>
<!ELEMENT name (family, given)>
<!ELEMENT family (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT given (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT email (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT institution (#PCDATA)>
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 12 Re-usable Education Object Strategy

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
Identify types of educational objects and divide them and their properties into
  • a) Education specific
  • b) World Wide or Business Enterprise specific (Yahoo Netscape IBM etc. will define e.g. portalML, X3D, VML )
  • c) Particular field specific (MathML, ChemistryML etc.)
Find where good standards exist and use them
Work with organizations to eventually agree on important missing standards (as with IMS and DoD ADL)
Define in XML, the missing interfaces as <fsueducationxml> and insist that vendors either adopt these interfaces or define their proprietary interfaces as <webctxml> <blackboardxml> etc.
  • Convert these temporary standards (either permanently or on the fly) to eventual <wwweducationxml>
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 13 Some General Objects of Importance to Education

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
"(better)portalML" -- define the user's customized portal layout and what they can choose from
  • define available objects and layout (number of columns etc.)
  • placement of component objects on pages and specification of their parameters and location e.g. access weather object for suchandsuchcity with suchandsuch sensor overlay
  • choice of nifty JavaScript index
  • preferences for resolutions and "universal access"
  • borders, backgrounds etc.
Portal building tools will exist for developers (architect type of portal i.e. differentiate my.NPAC from my.Netscape) and users ( specialize particular portal architecture )
Such general tools will be competition for education specific systems like WebCT
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 14 (Education) Portal Building Model

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
Educational Components and Services are abstracted as a set of hierarchical Toolbars-- perhaps as in Word or similar commodity software
Toolbars (made of individual commands/object accesses) are defined in XML and rendered in HTML for user interface.
Toolbars can access a direct client-side or middle-tier service or educational objects
Education Toolbars include user profile specification (layout, universal access), University Services (sports, tickets) , Choice of different curricula, Access to particular on-line resources (programming labs, chats, bulletin boards etc.), Homework submittal and administrative services, integration with "personal portal" to store notes
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 15 General Object Descriptors of Interest to Education II

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
VML is Vector Graphics Mark up Language
DrawML is designed to support simple technical drawings as sketched on whiteboards and used in (my) PowerPoint
VRML (3D scenes) re-implemented in XML as X3D
MathML Mathematical Expressions
What emerges to support export of Excel, Word for spreadsheets, text etc.
Database access languages as in ColdFusion
Resource Description Framework (RDF) standard for metadata exchange, enables better content searching on the Web
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 16 Database Access XML Templates -- Example I

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
<!-- WW_CONNECT is a tag that establishes a connection to the database. Connection string may be supplied in the CONNECTION attribute, or if it is omitted (empty string) the default connection string is taken.-->
<WW_CONNECT CONNECTION=""/>
<html> <head> <title> Separate IMAGE for LOCAL foil
<!-- WW_FOILNUMBER tag takes the position of the current foil in the current presentation. -->
<WW_FOILNUMBER PARENTID="${PID}" FOILID="${FID}"/>
<!-- WW_TITLE is a tag that allows to insert title of a presentation or foil. The presentation/foil is identified by an ID supplied in FOILID attribute. PARENTID is not currently used by the WW_TITLE tag, but can be later used, e.g. to check the formatting properties, which can be defined on the presentation level. FID and PID were supplied by the servlet from query attributes of the URL -->
Yellow is ordinary HTML, Green XML, White Comments
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 17 Database Access XML Templates -- Example II

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
<WW_TITLE FOILID="${FID}"/>
</title> </head>
<!-- WW_BODYIMAGE inserts a 'body' HTML tag with background image typical for foil files. -->
<WW_BODYIMAGE/>
<tt><a href="#image">Image</a><a href="#buttons"> Buttons</a> </tt> <b>
<WW_LINK FILENAME="temphelp.tdl" ATTR="">HELP!</WW_LINK> * GREY=local</b><tt> LOCAL IMAGE version of Foils prepared
<!-- WW_MODIFICATIONDATE inserts modification date of the current foil -->
<WW_MODIFICATIONDATE FOILID="${FID}"/> </tt>
...... And So On!
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 18 General Object Descriptors of Interest to Education III

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) enables simple authoring of TV-like multimedia presentations such as training courses on the Web
Image and other specialized media descriptors
  • enable storing of multiple resolutions (image) or multiple video codecs and optimized access
More generally perhaps universalaccessML will allow one to support different renderings of an object needed for different users and clients
  • palmtops versus PC's
  • audio versus image for visually impaired users
"People" including students, teachers, administrators
"Bibliographic" descriptors as in Dublin Core
CollaborationML as in NPAC's SPW (Shared Portal on the Web)
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 19 Education Specific Objects

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
Administrative Structure
  • degrees, departments, lecturers, Deans ...
Performance (grading) information
Assessment data such as surveys, access logs
Glossaries (there would be a middle tier glossary service to automatically link glossary entries to document fragments
Quizzes
Hierarchical Curriculum structure from document fragment to page to lecture to course with provision for linked material for further study
  • "next" "previous" "more detail" "linked video" buttons
Index/Abstract of high level knowledge
Homework
Student Annotations
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 20 Some Important Education Services/Tools

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
Glossary service stores current glossary (defined in XML) and integrates with selected document fragments
Select optimal version (audio, image, high resolution etc.) of an object (Universal Access Service)
XML Glossary
Java
Servlet
Add Glossary
Basic Web Server
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 21 Collaboration and Portals

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
We are discussing Web-based education or portals to a virtual university and we also build portals to computing
Merrill Lynch predicts that Enterprise Information portal market will be $15B by 2002
Portals are built as a customizable set of XML components ( e.g. Display a thumbnail of the next web-page in lecture or run a Particular Program )
Portals always support "asynchronous collaboration" but we can also built synchronous capability by extending Shared Web Page in our system Tango Interactive using XML to define nature of collaboration
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 22 Shared Portal on the Web

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
Each "Shared Portal on the Web" or SPW is a set of XML and HTML documents
An XML document defines the collaboration and portal Structure -- who is allowed in "Shared Place"; what objects can be there; where they are stored; portal design described earlier
  • For collaboration, this replaces the suite of undocumented rigid policies in TangoInteractive as well as scattered configuration files
  • There is one such XML document for each type of SPW e.g. there would be distedtojacksonstate.xml or distedfsu.xml or favoritecorporatetraining.xml etc.
  • We have developed the XML based SPDL (Shared Place Definition Language) which is currently quite simple and is used in the SPW structure definition
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 23 A Collection of Shared Place Components

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
<placedef>
.
. .
</placedef>
SPDL document
Web browser
Regular content
Web page
Document Fragments as Shared objects
In W3C DOM, each Web Page (HTML Page)is defined as a
set of Nodes -- You choose which nodes (and their children)
that you wish to share and then events are exchanged
maintaining state consistency with logic defined by XML page
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 24 SPDL Example: Declare Shared Portal Objects

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
<sharedobject name="viewer"/><location> http://www.npac.syr.edu/experiments/apps/viewer.jar
  • </location>
  • <width</width>
  • <height</height>
</shared_object>
<sharedobject name="chat">......</sharedobject>
This fragment describes shared portal objects that are used in the shared place.
  • Two shared objects are declared.
  • Other objects in the HTML page which are not declared here, will not be recognized by the Shared Place Framework and so operate in non collaborative mode.
HTML version of Basic Foils prepared 10 October 99

Foil 25 Another Example of SPDL: Define User Roles

From Uses of XML in Distance and Distributed Learning FSU Workshop on Symbolic Notations on the Web -- 8 October 99. *
Full HTML Index
<roles>
<object_roles name="viewer">
  • <role_item name="creator" mode="static" >
  • <user_group>syracuse</user_group>
  • </role_item>
  • <role_item name="observer" mode="static" >
  • <user_group>boston</user_group>
  • <user_group>washington</user_group>
  • </role_item>
</object_roles>
</roles>
The fragment of the SPDL document on this page defines the roles for the users of the shared object: in particular we illustrate with the roles creator and observer.
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