[Olpc-open] Educational XHTML Editor Educational Game Maker

[Mike Dawson]

Dear David,

Thanks for your email.  Will definitely try and put together an .xo
activity for the version of eXe learning as it is now - should work.

As a tool for the teachers and publishing to the school server -
indeed would be nice and would be possible.  eXe can indeed make
potential content producers far more productive.  I would rather stick
with those junior officers in deployments and hire them rather than
loading the job onto already overloaded teachers (or at least they are
in our case).

I guess one of the points of using eXe is that when you create content
it is not tied to any specific platform - it will run on an android
phone, web browser on any other computer etc.

What you can expect is a compatibility drive.  It would be possible to
make it export files to .xol for adding to the library automatically
or indeed to making an activity .xo file directly from exe learning.
You can also expect additional learning interaction formats to be
added.

I could definitely use help with pushing eXe further into the
community - documentation, wikis tutorials etc. would be most useful
indeed.   The more people using it and providing testimonials the
better.  And what really matters is the more people creating
interactive educational content - the better!

Regards,

-Mike

On 20 May 2010 04:01, David Leeming <david at leeming-consulting.com> wrote:
> Mike,
>
> I have followed eXe Learning since it started, developed by Wayne Mackintosh
> who later on, of course, created the WikiEducator and is a leading champion
> of OERs. I can instantly see that eXe Learning if installed on the XOs would
> be a very useful tool. Very easy to train teachers to become productive
> quickly, compared with, say, online wiki work, which is not always an option
> (yes we can install mediawiki on the XS but I think eXe Learning has
> specific advantages in some areas). It is very well targeted technology,
> thinking of the OLPC deployments in which I have been involved. As an
> example, in a distance learning programme here in Solomons in 2007 we
> converted examples of teacher training resources into online format using
> eXe Learning, in order to demonstrate simple first steps in e-learning to
> the Ministry. A junior officer with only basic office computing skills was
> able to migrate the entire RTC teacher training manuals to online with
> limited supervision - and she enjoyed it too!
>
> Of course, the resources produced with eXe Learning are HTML based which are
> easy to install in public folders on the XS. eXe Learning can also output
> SCORMs which can be loaded into the XS's Moodle as appropriate.
>
> If we had access to an eXe Learning activity I would immediately incorporate
> it into the teacher training that we do in Pacific Islands deployments.
> Empowering teachers to create and share resources is always a key component
> of Level 2/3 training, linked to curriculum integration. OERs have massive
> potential for the Pacific. Educators have repeatedly called for more
> regionally relevant and localisable curriculum related content, and
> empowerment of front line teachers to create OERs is the way to scalability
> - freeing up the dependence on overworked curriculum departments locked into
> traditional closed authoring approaches with long term donor programmes.
> Resources created with eXe Learning by teachers with XOs will therefore have
> a wide currency beyond the OLPC project areas which are still only small
> scale. They can be shared and used freely.
>
> So, I will watch this thread carefully. I would like to help, if not as an
> active team member on the coding, in other ways. What is the status of this,
> can we expect an eXe Learning project for Sugar and the XO?
>
> One requirement would be to be able to create a resource using the "eXe
> Learning" activity, name and save in journal, then to be able to upload it
> to the server so that it is installed as a public folder (or via "site
> files" etc) but without any difficult command line work needed on the
> server. So needs to be coordined with XS-devel.
>
> David Leeming
> Honiara, Solomon Islands
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: devel-bounces at lists.laptop.org [mailto:devel-bounces at lists.laptop.org]
> On Behalf Of Mike Dawson
> Sent: Tuesday, 18 May 2010 6:53 a.m.
> To: olpc-open; Developers List
> Subject: Educational XHTML Editor Educational Game Maker
>
> Dear List,
>
> One of the greatest challenges here in deployments has been to create
> sufficient curriculum *interactive* educational content.  Though
> Scratch and Etoys are great for simulators for many common educational
> interaction formats (e.g. assemble objects, click in place according
> to hint in order, memory match, hangman, sorting items etc) using such
> tools can be quite awkward.
>
> eXe Learning was created as a GUI educational XHTML Editor with
> support for fill in the blank question formats, multi choice, multi
> select etc.  I have created plugins for Place the objects / label
> (e.g. assembling parts / labelling a diagram), Click in place
> according to a hint, sort objects, hangman, memory match, moving
> object speed answer (e.g. Tuxmath) and sort.  The output is generated
> as HTML / Javascript which can run online or offline.  I've also
> created a plugin for embedding Scratch using the Scratch Java player
> with an option for the user to download.
>
> There are many repositories of open content; however many of them fail
> to harness the potential of ICT as an interactive medium.  Hopefully
> further lowering the barrier can help to create more.  This can make
> it far easier to turn existing open static content into interactive
> educational content.
>
> Compared to conventional Javascript / Flash / EToys development this
> dramatically increases the amount of educational interactive content
> that can be produced by given teams in a given amount of time.  It
> also can help make creation of interactive educational material far
> easier for educators by templating the kind of interaction they would
> like to produce and allowing them to just plug in the questions,
> answers, images, options of the game etc.
>
> For many parts of the curriculum the best course of action can be to
> embed already created Scratch simulators from the Scratch website
> (e.g. physics sims).  With eXe Learning + plugins one can produce a
> complete interactive package that opens in the browser.  I am hoping
> to develop a roleplay and generic simple simulator creator in the near
> future.
>
> I have also updated the HTML Editor to enable it to create HTML 5
> Audio and Video tags for embedding media.
>
> Comments/ Feedback most welcome.  The plugins are still 'bleeding
> edge'...  Will soon get the sourceforge project properly taken care of
> so that bugs / QA can be taken care of.
>
> For now see http://www.paiwastoon.af/eldep
>
> Regards from Afghanistan,
>
> -Mike
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