Forum .LRN Q&A: Javanti and OpenACS working together?

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1: Javanti and OpenACS working together?
Posted by Talli Somekh on 11/25/02 08:20 PM
Hi everyone,

I was surfing through the papers from the 2002 Tcl Conference and a paper about an open source tool called Javanti caught my eye.

The they presented is called "Using Tcl to Design Interactive eLearning Materials". In essence, Javanti is a desktop Java app that uses Jacl for dynamic scripting and rapid development.

From it's website, Javanti is:

Javanti is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for eLearning applications. It allows you to easily create virtual, interactive slides for your lesson, lecture or training session.

Javanti slides can contain static and dynamic elements, from simple text to complex simulations and experiments.

Javanti is Open Source and runs on all common operating systems, e.g. Windows, Linux and MacOS.

The reason that this is of interest beyond the obvious elearning connection is what the paper presented. Here is the paper's abstract: (I made some slight edits to the abstract to improve presentation)

Javanti is an Open Source authoring tool for multimedia content, focusing on eLearning materials. One can create dynamic and interactive slides using a visual what-you-see-is-what-you-get interface. Slides contain learning objects such as formatted text, animated graphics and several quiz types. Objects can be placed individually on a virtual board. To provide an interactive learning environment those objects shoudl respond to user input and communicate with each other.

We needed a scripting language to define the dynamic actions at runtime. Tcl was out first choice, becuase of its flexibility, extensibility and easy integration into applications. With Jacl there is an implementation of Tcl entirely written in Java which we use in our software product.

This paper discusses the purpose of Javanti, explains why we decided on Tcl as an integrated scripting languaeg and shows how Tcl is used to create eLearning materials.

I was wondering whether this tool could be used within the context of the OACS in order to provide an integrated multimedia "experience".

Any thoughts?

talli

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2: Re: Javanti and OpenACS working together? (response to 1)
Posted by David Kuczek on 11/25/02 08:28 PM
Malte is already in touch with them. There has been some posts about it on this forum... Just search for Javanti!
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4: Re: Javanti and OpenACS working together? (response to 1)
Posted by Dave Bauer on 11/25/02 08:38 PM
Here are the search results for Javanti:

https://openacs.org/search/search?q=javanti

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3: Re: Javanti and OpenACS working together? (response to 1)
Posted by Talli Somekh on 11/25/02 08:41 PM
I saw the search results, but Malte doesn't say anything about the tool itself other than a very general "we are working with them..."

Malte, do you have any other specific info about integration?

I am writing a proposal for building an eLearning tool for a university to teach basic stats and econ. They not only need a front end to present the concepts to the students, but also a back end to quiz the students, gather information as to their success in understanding the material and then make decisions as to the student's most appropriate class level.

The first part would best be done via flash or html. The second and third parts would best be served with a database system.

Javanti + OpenACS integration could solve both. But is that feasible?

talli

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5: Re: Javanti and OpenACS working together? (response to 1)
Posted by Talli Somekh on 11/25/02 08:42 PM
Direct link to paper

talli

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6: Re: Javanti and OpenACS working together? (response to 1)
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 11/25/02 10:48 PM
Talli,

yes, this is feasible and exactly what Tobias and I had in mind. Have Javanti do the frontend presentation and run dotLRN as the backend. This is why I was asking about SCORM, as Javanti has one guy writing his thesis on adding a SCORM interface to Javanti.

On our side, we are thinking about adding a SCORM complient interface to it as well and actually one guy (Ernie) is already deep into the subject, but so far I did not have the time to follow up with his ideas and make a decision if we are going to fund this solemnly on our own (as Javanti has no money to part with at the moment).

If you do have a client though, I'd suggest working together on the integration part, as both Javanti and us are sitting in the same city (well, same city as in Boston and Cambridge, MA).

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7: Re: Javanti and OpenACS working together? (response to 1)
Posted by Talli Somekh on 11/26/02 08:04 PM
Malte, that's awesome! I'll drop you a line and tell you what we're thinking about.

talli