Subject: RE: Science Education Portals
Resent-Date: Sun, 12 Dec 1999 09:54:13 -0500
Resent-From: Geoffrey Fox <gcf@npac.syr.edu>
Resent-To: p_gcf@npac.syr.edu
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 1999 06:36:39 -0800
From: "Roscoe Giles" <roscoe@bu.edu>
To: gcf@npac.syr.edu, "Reagan Moore" <moore@sdsc.edu>,
     "Ann Redelfs" <redelfs@sdsc.edu>,
     "Scott Lathrop" <scott@ncsa.uiuc.edu>,
     "Raquell Holmes" <rmholmes@bu.edu>, "Ilona Lappo" <lappo@bu.edu>
CC: "Roscoe C. Giles" <roscoe@bu.edu>

Several points:

* My understanding of the "partial ordering" idea was simply that there are
sets of events whose relative time ordering is functionally significant (for
example, the events initiating and comprising the multimedi streams you
describe)  and there are others which are un-related.  Thus, even though
timestamps allow for a total ordering of all events (assuming that there is
no problem establishing global time at the required resolution), only a
partial ordering of related events is significant.

* I agree that the tools required for assessment of learning are an angle
for education that we should push.  About a year ago, I was trying to get
folks at REC (who do education evaluation at NSF) interested in the idea of
"instrumenting" educational web sites to enhance the ability to do learning
assessments.  They were interested but then got re-orged.

* Another related activity is the portal's adjustment to capabilities of the
user (for example, people with disabilities).  The generalization is the way
in which the portal models its user. The education portal must (?) be able
to model properties of the user that the user is perhaps unaware of and
therefore unable to simply set as a preference.  How ambitious is this
element?

* Finally, what about non-human portal users (agents?).  Is it not part of
our portal philosophy that portals should be functionally usable by agents?
Does this include the education portal?

-- Roscoe