Archive for February, 2003

I finally got around to updating the Featured Object in our themes in CAREO. The previous one had been there since October, and was waaay overdue to be changed. The new Featured Object is the "Powers of 10" animation, done by Florida State University. VERY well done, and cool, too. Oh, and through the power of... »

I just migrated a bunch of relevant posts from my personal weblog into this one. This is where they should have been put in the first place, except for the fact that this blog didn't exist before February 2003... »

Well, that was kind of cool... I just implemented xml feeds for search queries in CAREO. Took about half an hour. You can subscribe to any term you would normally enter in the search field in CAREO. Not sure how/if it would handle multiple words or anything. I guess as long as they're URL... »

Just came across this link from Brian Lamb's weblog... Very interesting article, which basically boils down to something like "Technical interoperability is not the same as semantic interoperability" and goes on to discuss some interesting issues involving the granularity of a learning object, and the impact that has on its value and reusability. »

Just realized the RSS theme went from "Hey, that would be cool" to working prototype in under an hour and a half... And that was doing the vast majority of the theme fragment creation/conversion/entry manually to get around the namespace issue... Could have been about 15 minutes otherwise. Theming is cool ;-) »

I just hacked together a quick and dirty RSS theme in CAREO. Doesn't do a heck of a lot yet, but it's been a real eye-opener on what else will be required in the theming engine. Test feed is located here. It might be down, or broken, or whatever. It's waaay pre-alpha, prototype code. ... »

I've been toying with the idea of implementing an RSS theme for CAREO, mostly as a way to prove that theming really does work, and that the interface really CAN be anything (including a machine-readable XML feed). Stephen Downes was talking about RSS and Learning Objects at the IMS Technical Meetings (from what I hear),... »

I published the latest UCRepositoryCore framework, and the latest version of CAREO, to careo.ucalgary.ca today. Minor "issues" - mostly cosmetic, which will be resolved when all components have been converted to the new xml format. »

I've updated the theme for the SciQ Pre-Alpha theme. This version should handle stretching (vertically) much better. Granted, the search results pages won't be too long anyway, but I have to accommodate any length of page since they're being generated dynamically. Currently, I've used placeholder "content" for all pages. I know, the default "Home" page... »

Stephen Downes has posted his notes from the IMS Technical meeting. The page has a rather disturbing title, but it looks like a quick overview of the session for anyone who missed it (like myself). »