Subject: Re: Science Education Portals Resent-Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 09:36:13 -0500 Resent-From: Geoffrey Fox Resent-To: p_gcf@npac.syr.edu Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 18:07:44 -0800 From: Reagan Moore To: Geoffrey Fox >> 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. >So for example of multiple clients, this says there are lots of tags, > time, recipient, event-type, and one can choose to sort in many ways and as > in distributed recipient-specific queues, even use this soring to implement > storage of distributed data-base >Am I corrct? Yes. I agree with this characterization. Reagan >> >> * 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. >I have two students who are writing theses in this general area but the work >is not great (yet). The thesis that is almost finished is meant to discuss >the role of client (mouse-clicks etc.) and server (web page logs) events in >assesment >> >> * 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? >Well Trace center is of course key here. I think they believe this >is a huge exciting >project and putting it in this proposal is inappropriate. >My favorite portal architecture today (namely Berkeley's Ninja >system) is a good >framework here as built around events with active proxies to be >"agents" learning >and mapping data >> >> * 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? >Yes -- describe a good example where this is useful? >> >> -- Roscoe >> >> >> > > Reply by Geoffrey Fox gcf@npac.syr.edu, http://www.npac.syr.edu, > Phones Cell 3152546387 Office 3154432163 Npac 3154431723 Fax 3154434741