Icodeon Platform Blog

Outdoor Study Projects

2011-03-08T04:27:00.017Z

The European Union "Designing the Classroom of the Future" project is developing scenarios - lesson plans that aim to advance pedagogy and embed technology.

One scenario requires students go out to explore the natural environment around the school tasked with a problem or challenge. Overview in the video below.

For more detail on this scenario, go here. The blog post below shows how a class blog can re-mix services from the Icodeon Platform to support the scenario with simulations, assessments and discussions.

Food Webs, Biodiversity and Ecosystems

All living things need food to give them the energy to grow and move. A food chain shows how each living thing gets its food. It shows who is eating who.

Look at this video about two insects - a ladybird and an aphid. Who is eating who? Which is the predator? And which is the prey?

Before you go out into the field to study food webs, you can play a game to help you understand about food webs, predators, prey, consumers and producers. Click the "Open" button to work with this game from Cambridge University Press.

This assessment from Cambridge University Press will help you check your understanding about food webs, predators, prey, consumers and producers.

When you return from your field studies, think about the discussion topic below and add your comments. What do you think?

Embedded page fragments served by the Icodeon Platform.

The same content from the Icodeon Platorm re-mixed with different environments: a learning management system (Moodle), a teacher's blog (Tumblr), a social graph (Facebook), a productivity suite (Google Apps/Sites) and a mobile app.

Re-mixed into Moodle

Shared from Moodle into Social Graph

Re-mixed into Activity Stream

Viral sharing from Moodle

From Moodle into teacher's blog

Re-mixed into productivity suite

Out to mobile app

The Learning Revolution

2010-10-13T13:55:00.076+01:00

In 2009 the UK Government released a paper titled "The Learning Revolution" that stressed the value of semi-structured informal learning to complement institution based, curriculum driven formal education.

The paper accepted research showing that: unless learning includes informal rehearsal of formally acquired skills and knowledge, as much as 75% of the potential attainment could be lost.

The Icodeon Platform uses packages of premium, expert authored content to support both formal and informal learning.

Facial Expression Research (1862)

The following scenario describes a teacher's use of expert authored content deployed to the Icodeon Platform.

First, our teacher prepares for a short course on the Psychology of Facial Expressions.

The course is a blended learning course with some online learning and some class time.

Along with all other resources that the teacher assembles, a cartridge called "The Psychology of Faces" is uploaded to the Icodeon Platform.

Second, our teacher re-mixes the authoritative cartridge content with the class blog, along with other quality resources from the web, such as this article from Psychology Today. The resulting class blog might look like this.


Expert content re-mixed into blog

Third, the teacher re-mixes discussion material from the cartridge directly into student social networks (like this) so that the course content can continue to be discussed within each student's own social graph.

The class blog and the friends discussion represent opportunities for informal learning.

Finally, at the conclusion of the course, formal summative assessment can be achieved using the Icodeon Platform to deliver assessments to a school learning system.

Grades are securely returned from the Icodeon Platform to the learning system grade book.

The screen shots below show a rich media assessment hosted on the Icodeon Platform running in the popular Moodle learning system, along with resulting Moodle grade book:.

Secure assessment integration with IMS Basic LTI and Moodle

Secure results and outcomes integration using OAuth and Moodle

With a single cartridge deployed to the Icodeon Platform - expert, authoritative content has been blended with informal, social, personal and formal learning environments - and student grades have been securely returned to a school's own systems.

For more on educational scenarios that use cloud hosted apps and content, see the European Union iTEC Project.

For more on learning platform integration using Basic LTI and Simple Outcomes, see IMS Global Learning Consortium at Educause 2010 and the press release here.

The final two screen shots show the same cartridge assessment, still hosted on the Icodeon Platform, but this time launched in the SAKAI learning management system. Assessment outcomes are securely sent from the Icodeon Platform to the SAKAI grade book:


Secure assessment integration with IMS Basic LTI and SAKAI

Secure results and outcomes integration using OAuth and SAKAI

Download the PDF for Educause 2010.

Events

2010-09-27T10:15:00.000+01:00

ASPECT is a large-scale, EC-funded project that aims to develop best practice related to the implementation of learning content standards.

ASPECT is now at a stage where it is providing a new set of support services that facilitate the interoperability of learning content, including the following workshops:

ASPECT workshop at Frankfurt Book Fair 7 October 2010

The ASPECT project is running at Frankfurt Book Fair on 7 October .

The workshop at Frankfurt will explain how publishers and content developers, including Young Digital Planet and Cambridge University Press have benefitted from applying learning content standards.

The workshop will also show teachers are reacting to standards like SCORM and IMS Common Cartridge.

Even if you cannot attend this particular event, there are regular opportunities to take part in other ASPECT workshops, plugfests, free webinars etc.

Register on the ASPECT web site as a project Associate Partner abd keep informed of future ways to participate in ASPECT.

ASPECT workshop at SE@M2010 27-28 September 2010

ASPECT project is also running a workshop at SE@M 2010 on 27-28 September 2010 in Barcelona.

SE@M 2010 includes a keynote by Daniel Rehak from Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) in the USA.

The workshop will bring together publishers and content developers, managers of learning infrastructures and learning resource repositories, learning professionals and practitioners.

Cell Biology

2010-09-14T04:41:00.035+01:00

~ Demonstration Page using content deployed to Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform ~

An Introduction to Cell Biology

Magnified Skin Cells

In biology, the cell is the basic structure of organisms. All cells are made by other cells.

The environment outside of the cell and the inside of the cell are separated by the cell membrane. Inside some cells, some parts of the cell stay separate from other parts by membranes. These separate parts are called organelles (like small organs). They each do different things in the cell. Two examples are the nucleus (where DNA is), and mitochondria (where usable energy is created).

Ignore the pink shirt, and find out more with this short video:

Our teacher discusssed eukaryotic cells. What are they?

There are two basic kinds of cells: prokaryotic cells and eukaryotic cells.

Prokaryotes, bacteria and archaea, are simple cells with no internal organelles.
Eukaryotes are complex cells with many compartments within the cell. Eukaryotes store their genetic information (DNA) in a compartment called the nucleus.

In a prokaryotic cell the DNA is not separated from the rest of the cell. In general, all living things (organisms) that are made up of multiple cells are made up of eukaryotic cells.

Advanced students may like to read further about how proteins are used by both animals and plants in cells with this course from the UK Open University.

You can prepare for your school biology assessment using the test resources from Cambridge University Press.

There are two kinds or eukaryotic organisms:

Unicellular organisms are made up of one cell. An examples of a unicellular organisms is the Amoeba. Unicellular organisms live without other cells to help them.
Multicellular organisms are made from many cells. They are complex organisms. This can be a small number of cells, or millions of cells. All plants and animals are multicellular organisms.

This page was produced for the European Union ASPECT Project Consortium Meeting in Slovenia, September 13th 2010.

The Web, Version 3

2010-08-28T16:45:00.008+01:00

What will be the defining features of the World Wide Web in the next 10 years?

That was the essence of a question posed to Google boss Eric Schmidt recently.

We have had a web version 1 (1990s), and a web version 2 (2000s). But what will a web for the 2010s be like? A web version 3? This is what the Google CEO had to say:

Web 3.0 will be "applications that are pieced together" - with the characteristics that the apps are relatively small, the data is in the cloud, the apps can run on any device, the apps are very fast and very customizable, and are distributed virally (social networks, email, etc).

The Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform is poised to align very well with this vision for "Web 3.0" - adoption of open data standards such as OAuth and Open Social are already in place in the Icodeon software, along with the use of cloud based deployment and content delivery networks.

Look at this screen shot of a course on Portraiture running in the cloud based Icodeon Cartridge Explorer App (click for full sized image).

The course is made available from UK Open University servers using the IMS Common Cartridge specification and ingested by the Icodeon Platform. Once on the Icodeon Platform a URL Language is used so that small pieces of the course can be distributed virally (social networks, blogs, learning systems etc.), such as the embedded content below:

~ Embed widget from Icodeon CC Platform ~

Small, viral, embedded apps like the preview widget above are built using a few different requests of the Icodeon Platform URL Language.

First, a request is made for a representation of the chosen item in the course:

http://{host}/cartridges/{cartridge}/items/{item}.json 

Second we can request a plain text representation of the item resource:

http://{host}/cartridges/{cartridge}/items/{item}.txt

By adding a few URL query parameters we can generate a short 200 character summary text from the resource:

..&length=200&summary=true... 

Third, we can add a thumbnail from the images within the resource:

http://{host}/cartridges/{cartridge}/items/{item}/images/0.json

The Icodeon Platform wraps all of these calls into a single class file, so that all the functionality becomes available within a single request:

http://{host}/cartridges/{cartridge}/items/{item}.js

Finally, if we need to constrain the use of the embedded content to use on a particular domain, an API key can be added as a URL query parameter.

http://{host}/cartridges/{cartridge}/items/{item}.js?api_key=abc123

So with course objects available in the cloud, adoption of open data formats, and the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform - educational content is ready to used by teachers and students in their own personal learning apps and spaces during the 2010s.

The screen shot below shows the Open Learn course made available through the Icodeon Platform APIs and a Facebook mobile application:

Web 3.0 for education?

The Web, Version 2

2010-06-29T20:05:00.009+01:00

The original vision for the World Wide Web was a “Read/Write” Web.

Web pages would not only be hosted and “read” – but browsers would easily edit and “write” to these same pages.

This original vision took time to develop – with what some commentators call the “Read-Only” Version 1 of the Web persisting through the 1990s.

With the advent of collaborative tools, such as the wiki, then simple authoring for web logs (blogs) and finally social networking sites – the original vision of a “Read/Write” Web – a Web Version 2 – is now well established.

Will Richardson is one commentator who sees immense opportunities for using such a “Read/Write” Web in education. (Listen).

The process of creating content - not just consuming it - helps students exercise and develop their own understanding. The student is actively engaged in constructing a meaning for themselves. This is a constructivist view of learning, and when combined with the networked aspect of the Web, becomes a social, constructivist view.

Andrew Keen is a media critic who takes an opposite position to Will Richardson (Listen).

For Andrew Keen the “Read/Write” Web is a danger – for if everyone can be a writer and an author, if the barriers to publishing are so, so low – how do we identify the expert, authoritative authors that we should really learn from?

These two commentators lie at opposite ends of a spectrum of how we might think about using digital resources in our education systems.

But where in this spectrum does a technology such as IMS Common Cartridge belong?

We might suggest that content - authored by experts and published by an institution with an excellent academic reputation– such as the Common Cartridges available from the UK Open Learn website – most naturally belong at the Andrew Keen end of the spectrum.

But how helpful is the polarisation of opinion, for and against the Web, Version 2?

For most teachers the distinction between social, collaborative, constructivist learning and expert, didactic, authoritative exposition is not either/or - but both.

Teachers employ a variety of teaching styles – using their professional judgement to determine which teaching and learning style is best suited to a particular learning outcome, or even a particular student.

The Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform supports teachers who use such a variety of teaching styles.

Expert, authoritative, published content deployed to the Platform can be re-mixed and integrated with social environments.

See the screen shots below.

Expert, authoritative content published by the UK Open University and deployed to the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform, is easily added to the activity stream of a Facebook user and their social graph.

Open Learn Content in a mobile application

Authoritative content is now blended into the personal learning and group dynamics of a student.

This blog entry is derived from a presentation given by Warwick Bailey, Icodeon to the European Union National Summer School at the Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia (see video).

Ljubljana 28 june_2010

View more presentations from icodeon.

Open Learn

2010-06-01T02:35:00.040+01:00

OpenLearn is an activity of the UK Open University to provide free access to Open University course materials. The Open Learn website - called LearningSpace - has hundreds of free study units - each of which can be exported in Common Cartridge format.

This page shows some examples of using the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform URL Language with one of the Open Learn study units: Evolution through Natural Selection.

This first screen shot shows the Open Learn study unit displayed in the Icodeon Common Cartridge Explorer - an application built using only the Platform URL Language and an AJAX toolkit:

This kind of application is built by making requests to the Platform to return representations in the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format. The JSON format is specified in the Platform URL language as an extension path variable.

.json extension:

{host}/cartridges/{cartridge_id}/
items/{item_id}.json

We can also use other extension path variables to request different representations. For example, it is easy to write an image tag to quickly place a thumbnail image on a different website.

.gif extension:

<img src="{host}/cartridges/{cartridge_id}/
items/{item_id}.gif">

In addition to supporting standard file extension path variables (like .gif and .jpg), the Platform APIs include some extensions that have specific meaning only within the Icodeon Platform.

.go extension: used to redirect to a file that is referenced by an item resource in the cartridge manifest. Secure links can be built using the .go extension and the redirect is a URL with a time-stamped expiry.
```
<a href="{host}/cartridges/{cartridge_id}/
items/{item_id}.go">Go to the page</a>
```
.do extension: used to redirect to a landing page. The landing page can be configured using a plug-in component on the Platform - and the algorithm that determines the landing page URL is passed a collection of properties and meta data about the item resource in the cartridge manifest. The default plug-in uses the properties and meta-data to set up a Google search.
```
<a href="{host}/cartridges/{cartridge_id}/
items/{item_id}.do">Go to the landing page</a>
```

These extension path variables can be used in the URL Language in exactly the same way as standard file extension path variables (like .gif and .jpg).

So the use of the Platform URL language, and different extension path variables, is a simple way to securely re-use and re-mix content from study units on different consumer websites.

Below are the results when Platform URL language is used in this blog page:

Go to the page

Go to the landing page

The techniques of using the Platform URL language can be combined with other Web APIs.

An example of combining the Icodeon Platform APIs with other web APIs is shown below - content on the Icodeon CC Platform can be easily and securely shared into a Facebook activity stream using both Platform and Facebook Web APIs:

(Click for full size image)

The content then becomes available to other apps, such as mobile applications that can read the users activity stream. See the screen shot below from a Blackberry mobile device:

(Click for full size image)

Page fragment embedded into to Google Blogger blog entry.

Platform Tools

2010-04-07T17:01:00.012+01:00

The Icodeon Platform is a software toolkit for building online education tools, apps and websites.

Technically, the Icodeon Platform is a RESTful Web API for packaged educational content such as IMS Common Cartridge and ADL SCORM. The Platform provides a set of secure "Web Services" that enable developers to build online education tools that can be integrated with social networks, blogs, wikis, learning management systems and so on.

All the web services are secured using a popular web authorization protocol called OAuth - so that only intended users can make requests and receive responses. OAuth is an open protocol to allow secure API authorization in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications.

In addition to this core level of security and control - the Platform is supported by two tools to help developers and administrators manage the e-learning content: - the Administrator tool and the Icodeon Platform Runtime tool.

The Administrator tool is a web application that enables content collections to be imported onto the Platform and user permissions to be set. Only registered administrator users within a Platform account can log in and perform these functions. The screen shot below shows the Administrator tool listing the content packages in a particular account and some of the administrative functions available (click for full size image).

The Icodeon Platform Runtime tool is a web application that that enables content to be browsed. Registered administrator users within a Platform account can browse cartridge content and decide which parts of the cartridge are to be used. The Runtime tool can also be made available more generally using an authorization protocol called IMS Basic Learning Tools Interoperability. The screen shot below shows the Runtime tool launched by a learning object repository - so that users can browse content before downloading the cartridge for import into a learning management system (click for full size image).

Examples of Platform API usage:

BlackBoard Learning Management System

Its Learning Learning Management System

Facebook Social Network

MySpace Social Network

Atlassian Confluence Wiki

Google Blog

App Store

2010-03-21T22:37:00.020Z

If you own a smart phone it is likely that it comes pre-loaded with a suite of programs that cover what most phone users want to do most of the time.

An address book program is a must, and a calendar program is common.

But what if you have more specialized needs than what most phone users want to do most of the time? A currency conveter program, for example? A foreign language dictionary, a simulation game?

Many smart phones now come with the ability to "plug-in" a new program - personalizing the phone and extending it's functionality - and allowing the new program to securely share some of the core data and functions of the phone. The Apple iPhone App Store is a good example of this approach - with a selection of more that 150,000 additional programs available (March 2010).

The IMS Common Cartridge specification aims to support what what most educational publishers want to do most of the time - by defining a set of educational resources common to educational publishing: content pages, external web links, discussion forums, assessment questions and so on.

But what if you have more specialized needs than what most publishers want to do most of the time? A molecular modelling environment for a chemsitry course perhaps? A foreign language dictionary, a simulation game?

The IMS Common Cartridge specification comes with the ability to "plug-in" new programs also - allowing the new program to securely share some of the core data about the learner's profile. This extensibility is afforded by the addition of the IMS (Basic) Learning Tools Interoperability specification to Common Cartridge.

Here's how it works - in three steps:

First, an educational publisher creates an XML file that describes an external program - and adds this file as a resource within a cartridge. For example, here is an XML descriptor file that references an eBook app:

<?xml version="1.0"encoding="UTF-8"?>
<basic_lti_link>
  <title>Organic Chemistry Chapter 1</title>
  <custom>
    <parameter key="ISBN">9780321598745,1</parameter>
  </custom>
  <launch_url>
http://ebooks.coursesmart.com/CSEbook.jsp
</launch_url>
  <vendor>
    <name>CourseSmart</name>
    <description>
      A link to the CourseSmart eBook Chapter 2 
of Organic Chemistry, 
7th edition, by Leroy G. Wade, published 
by Pearson Prentice Hall, copyright 2010.
    </description>
  </vendor>
</basic_lti_link>

It's easy to follow along with the description in the XML. There is an eBook app hosted by a vendor called CourseSmart. Note that the vendor can include some custom parameters that have meaning to the eBook app. In our case, the vendor has included a single custom parameter - which appears to be a unqiue identifier for the book (it's ISBN) followed by a chapter index. That's a guess (probably correct) - but the point is that the parameters only have meaning to the publisher and the eBook app - a learning system that implements IMS Common Cartridge does not have to understand these parameters, just honour them.

Second, the cartridge, and its XML descriptor file, are added to an e-learning system that support IMS CC - such as the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform. The XML file is parsed and the e-learning system sets up a HTML form to be posted to the launch URL defined in the XML, along with the custom parameters. A number of other parameters are added also - such as an indentifier for the user, the course the user is studying, which school the user is attending and so on. But hang on - isn't that very insecure? A user on one system is getting free access to a publisher's valuable eBook! And the publisher's eBook app is being sent the private profile of the user! There's a third step to resolve this ambiguity.

Third, the e-learning system and the eBook app exchange a pair of keys - one public key and one private key. Whenever the e-learning system makes a request to the eBook app, the request is signed - a parameter string is added the request that only a party owning both the public and the private key can decode. In this way the eBook app knows unambigously which system sent the request - because the only party that owns the pairs of keys, apart from itself, is the e-learning system.

You can see how this works in the screen shot below of the Icodeon Cartridge Explorer application (click for full size image):

Details from the XML descriptor file have been made available and the HTML form has been set up with the custom parameters and the user profile. The launch button is clicked, the request is signed, the eBook app decodes the signature and reads the parameters, and the eBook is made available to the user in a new window (click for full size image):

By using IMS (Basic) Learning Tools Interoperability with cartridges, like using the Apple App Store for the iPhone, there is a great potential for adding new programs to extend standard functionality.

You can see how this might be used within education on our Organic Chemistry page - a demonstration page that shows how a college chemistry tutor might mash-up YouTube video, Common Cartridge assessments and eBook launch into a single blog page.

See the video by Dr Charles Severance (IMS) introducing IMS (Basic) Learning Tools Interoperability.

IMS Basic Learning Tools Interoperability from Charles Severance on Vimeo.

Distributed Learning Environments

2010-03-11T20:42:00.006Z

Building on the CETIS 09 composing your learning environment sessions, a meeting on 04 March 2010 focused on the area of distributed learning technologies - to provide a focus for discussion on the future of the learning management systems.

A number of presentations demonstrating various models were shown at the event including the ICODEON CC Platform and Google Wave. See the agenda here.

The background breifing paper is here, previous discussion is here and Twitter stream from the meeting is here.

Slideshare from the Icodeon presentation is below:

Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform

View more presentations from sheilamac.

Phone Home

2010-03-09T09:09:00.004Z

The Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform enables Common Cartridge features to be integrated into different web environments - such as blogs, wikis and social networking sites.

Some Common Cartridge features, such as assessments and discussions, may require a unique user identity, and sometimes this identity can be accessed from the web environment.

For example, look at this integration with the MySpace social networking platform - the user's identity and their social graph are available to be mixed with the content from the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform.

But what about web environments where the user identity is not available or inaccessible? In these cases, we can use a technique where the user can "phone home" to another website to "ask for permission" to use their identity "away from home".

There are a number of "home" websites that allow their users to "phone home" - Google (Friend Connect) and Facebook (Connect) are two popular examples - but in principle, any web application can set up a service, using the OAuth protocol for example.

You can see a live example in our Psychology of Faces demonstration page. In this page, the learner is guided through some material on psychology and the human expression of emotions - and then invited to post a comment to a discussion topic from the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform.

To post a comment, the learner first needs to "phone home" to their "home" Facebook account - and then use their Facebook screen name and icon/avatar in the discussion topic post. All posts are persisted to the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform. Optionally, posting activity can also be reflected back to the Facebook wall and activity stream of the contributing users.

Click the screen shot below for full size image.

Why Things Happen

2010-03-08T01:22:00.025Z

~ Demonstration page using content deployed to the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform ~

A hammer falls to the ground, nobody falls off continents in the southern hemisphere, and the Earth continues to orbit the sun.

In physics during the 17th century, Isaac Newton described a single Law of Gravity that explained why all these things happen.

But why does a candle burn, and not a rock? Why does iron rust and not gold? And why does water stay at 100 degrees even when you continue to keep heating it up? Why do these things happen?

In chemistry, scientists have decribed Laws of Thermodynamics - that explain why these types of things, these chemical processes, happen.

We might think that we know what everyday words such as temperature, heat and energy mean - but scientists in the 18th and 19th century had to work hard to define these concepts precisely.

The links below introduce some of these fundamental ideas in thermodynamics. These links are for Lesson 1, from a course of 3 lessons in physical chemistry.

In everyday life we might use words such as temperature and heat to mean the same thing - but in thermodynamics the two words have different, and very precise, meanings.

Check your understanding of scientific meaning of the word heat with these questions:

The lesson plan for this page ("Thermodynamics") was developed at The Faculty of Computer and Information Science at Ljubljana in Slovenia (http://www.fri.uni-lj.si).

Great Britain

2010-03-04T17:24:00.016Z

~ Demonstration page using content deployed to the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform ~

What is that island state just across the "English" channel from France?

Is it England? Or the United Kingdom? Great Britain? Or the British Isles? Part of the Commonwealth? (What is that?).

Many visitors would call the island state by the name "England" - but they would soon change their choice of words if they met a resident from Scotland! Or from Wales. And what about Northern Ireland too? So there is some confusion for visitors...

Look at this article about the Union Jack flag - the history of the flag tells us something about the relationships between the regions that make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Visitors often asscociate some cultural aspects as uniquely British, and include:

the use of satire in humour and comedy
the playing of team sports like cricket and rugby
the use of politeness and reserve in relationships

Look at this video about a fictional hotel in England to identify some cultural aspects as uniquely British:

Now check your understanding with the quick quiz below:

Explore some of the issues of British identity in our discussion topic below. Login with your Facebook username and password, and add your ideas - what do you think?

The Psychology of Faces

2010-03-01T22:48:00.021Z

~ Demonstration Page using content deployed to the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform ~

Who hasn't waited for an old friend at an airport and scanned faces impatiently as passengers come hurrying through the gate?

Finally, your friend appears, face lighting up as you come into view. If a mirror suddenly dropped down before you, there'd be that same goofy smile on your face, the same look of uncomplicated pleasure.

As psychologists now are discovering, the power of the face resides in the fleeting split-second expressions that slip across it thousands of times each day.

Check your understanding of the science of psychology:

You can read the full article from Psychology Today and then explore some of the issues in our discussion topic below. Login with your Facebook username and password, and add your ideas - what do you think?

Orkut

2010-02-26T00:14:00.006Z

Orkut is a social networking site with more than 37 million total members, the majority of which are Brazilian, followed smaller numbers of users from India and the United States, mainly in the 18-30 demographic.

The site is owned and operated by Google and is named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten.

For OpenSocial development, Orkut is an attractive platform, despite its niche demographic (mainly Brazilians under 30) - because it is very easy to set up a developer "sandbox" account that can be used to explore deployment of OpenSocial applications that integrate with data from the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform.

Once the an application has been developed in the Orkut "sandbox", the same application can be deployed to other platforms- such as MySpace - where perhaps the development environment is less comfortable to use or harder to set up.

You first need to sign up for a standard Orkut account and then for a "sandbox" at the following location: http://sandbox.orkut.com/SandboxSignup.aspx.

All that is required is name, company name and email - and you are ready to start deploying OpenSocial apps to "sandbox" - see screen shot above right and click for full size image.

The screenshot on the left shows an application deployed to Orkut that intgerates data and functionality from the social network with data from a discussion topic deployed to the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform.

Click for full size image.

Content Delivery

2010-02-23T13:54:00.012Z

For internet applications that make heavy use of static content, there are a number of solutions that can be used to improve performance - by reducing load on the web server that is managing the dynamic content and by moving static content to the shortest network distance from the requesting client.

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are commercially available as sets of grid computers - to free up resources from the server that manages the dynamic content and produce a fast response time for the client through caching and local geographic proximity.

The Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform has a static content hosting plug-in architecture so that plug-ins for different hosting solutions and CDNs can be added.

For example, the platform is provided with a default plug-in that uses the Amazon S3 Simple Storage hosting service for all static content from within a cartridge.

When a request is made to the Icodeon platform, the dynamic content (XML, JSON) representation is returned, but all references to static content (images, media files, styles sheets and so on) are re-written by the static content hosting plug-in to point out to the hosting service or CDNs.

In the screen shot below of a MySpace app the dynamic content is created both by the Icodeon Platform and the social network site (using a web application hybrid mashup design) - but the references images and attachments are re-written to be requested from the hosting service or CDN:

The requests made to the hosting service or CDN are also time stamped - so that the actual URL used to request the static content will expire - protecting the cartridge resources, the images and attachments, from being used outside their intended apps and domains.

Overview

2010-02-22T02:09:00.002Z

Most implementations of IMS Common Cartridge are within Learning Management Systems.

The Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform takes a radically different approach, and provides a powerful set of web service defintions.

These web services provide a set of building blocks to enable developers to construct e-learning tools for learning management systems, websites, blogs, wikis, mobile applications and social networking sites. Download an overview presentation here

MySpace

2010-02-21T00:23:00.014Z

MySpace is a social networking website - a popular web destination that allows users to interact and share data based around permissions granted to photos, comments and other items with site "friends".

MySpace became the most popular social networking site in the United States in June 2006, with a strong demographic of US teenagers. The 100 millionth account was created on My Space during August 2006 and currently has about 20 million users.

MySpace was also one of the initial launch partners for OpenSocial - the set of Web APIs for working with Social Network data. You can read more about OpenSocial here.

The set of Web APIs used by the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform closely mirrors the Web APIs used in OpenSocial - which opens up an opportunity for writing apps that integrate e-learning content into group, peer, collaborative and social contexts.

The IMS Common Cartridge specification includes a schema for an intstructor to set up a discussion topic - with rich HTML formatting, images, links and attachments. The XML below conforms to this schema, and could be added to a cartridge:

<dt:topic xmlns:dt="http://www.imsglobal.org/xsd/imsdt_v1p0">
 <title>The Psychology of Faces</title>
 <text texttype="text/html">
   Might there be a culture in the world that expresses joy 
through scowling and fear through laughter? Does your dog 
smile when he's happy?<br/>
<img src="$IMS-CC-FILEBASE$../I_media_R/smiling_dog.jpg"/>
</text>
<attachments>
  <attachment href="angry_person.jpg"/>
 </attachments>
</dt:topic>

It is simple for an OpenSocial app to construct an HTTP request to the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform - which then responds with a data format (OpenSocial JavaScript Object Notation, OpenSocial XML or OpenSocial ATOM) that can easily processed into the MySpace app canvas:

GET /cartridges/{cartridge}/items/{item}/topics/psychology101

The result is a Common Cartridge discussion with all the specificed rich HTML formatting, images, links and attachments running in a group, peer, collaborative and social context.

The discussion posts are persisted to the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform - the discussion can be concluded when the instructor decides and a transcript of the discussion printed off from the Icodeon platform - either for assessment/grading or for classroom use.

The resulting discussion running in MySpace is shown below - click for full-size image.

Open Social

2010-02-20T02:03:00.022Z

Good teachers have always recognised that they require of variety of teaching methods - and that their students will have a variety of learning styles.

In addition, some topics are best learnt with one type of teaching method and learning style - but this approach may not be best for a different topic.

Recently, there has been recoginition that learning that takes place within a group, peer, collaborative or social environment can be an important teaching and learning style.

OpenSocial is a set of definitions and practices that enable developers to work with the kind of data that is used in social networks.

These definitions and practices align well with the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform when developers wish to use the platform to build e-learning tools for pedagogies that include a group, peer, collaborative or social dimension.

The OpenSpocial definitions enable developers to:

build apps that run within social network applications.
build apps that run outside social network applications, but use data from social networks.

OpenSocial is currently being developed by a broad set of members of the web community. The ultimate goal is for any social website to be able to implement the OpenSocial and host 3rd party social applications. There are many organizations, projects and web sites that support OpenSocial, including:

LinkedIn
MySpace
Ning
Google
Netlog
Apache Shindig
Yahoo!
Hi5

Video

2009-12-08T14:11:00.009Z

~ This page links to two videos that describe the common success scenarios for using Common Cartridge and SCORM: blended learning and self-paced training respectively ~

Two videos from Icodeon are now available, describing IMS Common Cartridge and Advanced SCORM 2004 technologies respectively.

Introducing IMS Common Cartridge

This video explores the use of the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform and introduces the different e-Learning materials within a cartridge that can be used by teachers and their groups of students.

Advanced SCORM 2004

This video explores the use of advanced sequencing and navigation techniques available in the Icodeon SCORM Player to deliver web based training to independent, self-paced, learners.

Disaggregation Models

2009-11-30T20:29:00.041Z

~ This page describes how specific chapters, modules, units and pages of a course can be individually selected using the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform ~

Disaggregation is used to describe how a collection of digital assets might be logically divided into smaller units.

There does not seem to be anything very controversial about that - but disaggregation has been the cause of more disagreement than you might expect.

A classic example of a disaggregation controversy occured with the disruptive introduction of digital music software, such as iTunes. The music industry wanted to sell a CD; the consumer wanted to buy an individual track. What was the right "unit of disaggregation"? Well, eventually the consumer's view prevailed: the individual track took precedence over the CD.

The e-Learning industry has had its own disaggregation controversy - by trying to figure out what the "unit of disaggregation" is for online learning: is it the course, the unit, the module, the activity? Or what? Most of this time this controversy is expressed in the debate about what a digital learning object is.

You might suppose that the World Wide Web might fall into it's own disaggregation controversy. After all, what is the unit of "unit of disaggregation" for the web? Is it a website? A web page? An image in a web page?

Interestingly, the World Wide Web neatly side-steps it's own disaggregation controversy with the concept of addressability: everything on the web MUST have a unique address - a URL - whether it is a website, a web page or an image. Look at these addresses:

http://www.website.com
http://www.website.com/webpage.html
http://www.website.com/images/image.gif

With the web, we do not need to concern ourselves too much with disaggregation, because what ever level of granularity we want to work with, we can construct an appropriate address.

The Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform follows the World Wide Web approach - and side-steps any disaggregation controversy by using a URL Language that supports addressability.

Look at this course about college Organic Chemistry, published by Pearson in IMS Common Cartridge format. You can see the entire cartridge here in the Icodeon Cartridge Explorer.

There is the entire cartridge, subdivided into chapters, each of which have several pages.

Most instructors would probably want to use some of this material, but not all of it. So what is the "unit of disaggregation" that should be offered to the instructor?

The Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform makes this question redundant because the Platform URL Language can address the cartridge, or the chapter, or the page. Or a mix of these (a page from Chapter 1, and all of Chapter 2 - for example).

The choice is for the instructor to make - and it not limited by any technology decision.

To address a page, we use the URL Language like this:

http://{hostname}/cartridges/
{cartridge-name}/items/@first.json

That gives us a JSON representation of the first page in the cartridge. When mashed up with a blog, we end up with a single link:

~ Webcontent Launch Tool from Icodeon CC Platform ~

But what if we want a chapter, not a page? We just use the URL Language with an address including the chapter identifier, not the page identifier:

http://{hostname}/cartridges/
{cartridge-name}/items/{item-identifier}.json

That gives us a JSON representation of a chapter in the cartridge. When mashed up with a blog, we end up with a list of links:

~ Webcontent Launch Tool from Icodeon CC Platform ~

And if we want the whole course, not a chapter? We just use the URL Language that uses the root identifier:

http://{hostname}/cartridges/
{cartridge-name}/items/@root.json

That gives us a JSON representation of the whole course.When mashed up with a blog, we end up with a nested list of links:

~ Webcontent Launch Tool from Icodeon CC Platform ~

The instructor is free to choose what is included in e-Learning material: references to a course, a chapter or a page are all supported.

So by following the World Wide Web approach - and side-stepping any disaggregation controversy by using addressability - the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform puts the decision about the size of the learning object back where it belongs: in the professional judgement of the instructor.

Common Cartridge Workshop

2009-11-20T09:29:00.027Z

~ This page describes work by members of the European Union ASPECT Project to prepare 200 units of K-12 science and maths content in IMS Common Cartridge format ~

Content developers from partners in the European Union ASPECT Project gathered in Denmark this week for a first "plug-fest" - converting existing content to IMS Common Cartridge format.
A main benefit of moving content to this new format is that the educational material can then be used for "blended learning" scenarios: teachers can "pick and mix" exactly which educational resources they want to use, and easily add group activities such as discussions and assessments.
Two main tools were used to convert existing content to IMS Common Cartridge format:

SCORM to Common Cartridge Converter
Common Cartridge Packaging Tool from Learning Components

Both of these tools are at a relatively early stage of development - however, most of content could either be converted or the issue that limited conversion was easily identified.
The Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform was used to show how teachers can "pick and mix" exactly which digital educational resources they want to use from a cartridge - in a similar way that teachers select non-digital resources (text books, worksheets etc) to support their students.

Download the presentation

This "pick and mix" approach used the "Embed" feature of the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform - which allows users to embed digital resources from a cartridge into web pages - in exactly the same way that YouTube videos are shared.

Using this "Embed" feature the workshop showed that a quiz (a QTI assessment) could be easily shared as a "Web 2.0 Resource" to the Its Learning platform - a widely used Learning Management System in Europe.

Workshop participants highly recommended that this "Embed" feature of the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform be developed further - possibly along the lines of the Share This applet - that enables one-button-click integration of content into social networking sites such as Facebook.

In this way digital resources from the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform can be easily made available by teachers for integration into web enviroments that are used by their groups of students.

See an assessment integrated into a blog post
See a secure eBook integrated into a blog post
See a SCORM object integrated into a blog post
See Common Cartridge web content integrated into a map

To follow this work, you can become as Associate Partner with the European Union ASPECT Project or click the "Follow" button on this blog.

SCORM 2 CC

2009-11-13T17:56:00.032Z

~ This page describes the experience of converting existing SCORM content to IMS Common Cartridge format~

In this blog entry I am going to describe the process for converting training content from the ADL SCORM 1.2 format to the IMS Common Cartridge 1.0 format - using software tools from Icodeon and from the IMS Common Cartridge Alliance.

The final result is shown below - a launch button embedded into a web page that launches the content into a new browser window:

~ Webcontent Launch Tool from Icodeon CC Platform ~

These are the steps:

First, I downloaded the freely available SCORM to Common Cartridge Converter called SCORM2CC from the Codeplex Open Source site. The software is Windows only, and comes with an installer that downloads any dependencies that might be missing on your system.
Next, I chose a SCORM package .zip file that I wanted to convert and ran it through the SCORM2CC tool. The tool outputs a directory and a .zip file of exactly the same name as the original SCORM .zip file - so make sure you do not get mixed up between the original SCORM .zip file and the new Common Cartridge .zip file!
To check that everything had been converted correctly I downloaded the Common Cartridge Conformance test tool which is available if you first sign up and join the IMS Common Cartridge Alliance. I ran the new Common Cartridge .zip file through the tester - and received a report that said no errors. So far so good! (...but see my comment later: the original SCORM package manifest did not include all the required references to dependent files...).
Then I uploaded the newly converted and tested Common Cartridge .zip file to the web based Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform and launched the content in the Cartridge Explorer tool. Everything looked great until I tried to run a few SCORM API calls - which gave errors. On further investigation it turned out that the source imsmanifest.xml in the original SCORM package did not list all the files in the package - there were some
```
<resource/>
```
XML elements missing file dependencies.

So the SCORM2CC tool trusts the original source manifest to list all the dependent files - and if the original manifest is not being completely honest about all the resources it needs, then the new Common Cartridge .zip file will be missing these dependent file also. So keep an eye out for that!
Finally, I wanted to integrate the launch of one of the SCORM learning objects (the "SCO"s as they are called) into a web page (actually this page), so I used the embed tool in the Icodeon Cartridge Explorer tool.

To do this I first generated an API key on the Icodeon Cartridge Platform for the domain where I wished to launch the SCORM learning object (this sub-domain actually, which is called "ccplatform.blogspot.com") and then used that API key in the embed tool to generate an HTML tag like this:

<!-- add this tag to your page -->
<script type="text/javascript" 
src="http://www.common-cartridge.com/cartridges/
SCORM_Detective_1p2/items/ITEM1
/webcontent.js?_api_key=my_api_key"></script>

If you look carefully you can see the URL address conforms nicely to the Icodeon CC Platform URL Language - you can find out more about that language here.

http://{host}/cartridges/
{cartridge}/items/{item}/{resource}.{ext}

So once the HTML tag had been generated with the correct API key, all I had to do was add the single HTML tag to the webpage (this page actually) and voila! - a launch link was written to the web page.
SCORM 2 CC done.
Have you converted SCORM to Common Cartridge? Why not add your comment on your experiences on this blog?

The Blue Ribbon

2009-11-12T13:28:00.052Z

~ Demonstration Page using content deployed to Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform ~

Exploring the River Danube and our European Identity

Known to history as one of the long-standing frontiers of the Roman Empire, the River Danube flows through, or forms a part of the borders of, ten countries:

Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, and Ukraine.

"... the River Danube crosses borders and connects countries - but what else connects us? Similar ideas? Technology? Common values? A shared environment? ..."

Use the map to trace the course of the Danube from its source in Germany to its delta in the Black Sea, via four European capital cities.

~ Map Mashup with content from Icodeon CC Platform ~

Use the questions below to check your knowledge of the key facts about the River Danube.

You will need to know about the course of the River Danube, the cities and countries through which it flows, as well as the how the river has played a part in European history.

~ QTI Assessment Tool from Icodeon CC Platform ~

The River Danube crosses borders and connects countries, but what else connects us? Similar ideas? Technology? A future environment?

Might there be interests that we all share?
Are there values that all Europeans agree on?
How does technology remove barriers and borders?

Organic Chemistry

2009-11-03T19:08:00.083Z

~ Demonstration Page using content deployed to Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform ~

An Introduction to College Organic Chemistry with Integrated eBook

The modern definition of organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. The term organic literally means "derived from living organisms."

Originally, organic chemistry was limited to the study of compounds from living organisms.

But now, chemists have learned to make millions of original compounds, plus synthetic versions of many organic compounds that are identical with the "natural" compounds.

You can review the basics of Organic Chemistry with the "Chem Guy" in the video below.

You can read more about Organic Chemistry with an eBook reader tool that is available from the tool launcher below. The eBook ir provided by CourseSmart, the world's largest provider of digital course materials.

The CourseSmart catalog includes over 90% of the core textbooks in use today in North American Higher Education as eTextbooks, as well as the largest online catalog of eResources and digital course materials available for instant access.

~ Basic LTI Launch Tool from Icodeon CC Platform ~

All chemistry is related to the electron configuration of the elements and the re-distribution of electrons when elements enter into chemical bonds. You can check your understanding with the short assessment questions below.

~ QTI Assessment Tool from Icodeon CC Platform ~

An understanding of the following is important for further study in organic chemistry:

general atomic structure
covalent bonding theories
acid–base theories
molecular formulas
empirical formulas

These concepts are used to understand the properties and reactions of organic compounds.

Key areas of college organic chemistry are available in IMS Common Cartridge format published by Pearson Education.

Featuring eBook integration from CourseSmart: Founded in 2007, CourseSmart LLC delivers a revolutionary new way to access textbooks for instructors and students.

Integration Tool Kit for Java/JSP

2009-07-22T05:50:00.013+01:00

What is Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform?

Download Java/JSP Tool Kit (Release 0.03, Revision 577) for integrating Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform into Java based Learning Management Systems, Repositories and other e-Learning systems.

22 July 2009
Download Java/JSP Tool Kit (Release 0.04, Revision 1472) for integrating Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform into Java based Learning Management Systems, Repositories and other e-Learning systems.

27 Oct 2010

A test instance of this Tool Kit is available here.

The test instance is using IMS Basic LTI to launch the Icodeon Platform "Cartridge Explorer App".

A Common Evolution for IMS Simple Sequencing?

2009-07-13T15:43:00.005+01:00

What is Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform?

Sequencing of instructional activities has been an ongoing topic of debate within the IMS Global Learning Consortium. IMS has developed and issued two specifications that address sequencing issues: Simple Sequencing and Learning Design.

Warwick Bailey, of IMS member Icodeon and Rob Abel, CEO of IMS have authored a paper that considers the options for evolving Simple Sequencing. Over the years most have concluded that Simple Sequencing has not been "simple" to implement in SCORM 2004 (the only known implementation of the specification). However, valuable feedback on the implementation has been received by both IMS and the Advanced Distributed Learning Initiative (responsible for SCORM). The paper draws some conclusions from the feedback to IMS, especially with respect to future adoption in the education segments. The result is an approach that may work both for SCORM (self-paced online instruction) and the new Common Cartridge standard (for instructor-in-the-loop educational content).

Download the White Paper

Comparing IMS CC and SCORM

2009-06-29T10:18:00.008+01:00

What is Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform?

The ADL SCORM and IMS Common Cartridge specifications make different choices of technical requirements - that in turn, imply different use scenarios.

For example, the inclusion of user tracking and automatic sequencing in SCORM imply that the computer system, not an instructor, is monitoring and directing an individual learner. The inclusion of discussions in IMS Common Cartridge imply that a group of learners is working with the learning material.

In a presentation to the working group of the European Union funded "Learning Resource Exchange", Warwick Bailey, Director, Icodeon Ltd explored the how the technical choices in SCORM and IMS CC influence the pedagogic use of the specifications - and where each specification might be used most effectively.

Download presentation (.ppt): E-Learning Standards for Packaged Content

View presentation (.mht): E-Learning Standards for Packaged Content (Internet Explorer Only)

The European Schoolnet is building a Learning Resource Exchange (LRE) service for schools that will enable teachers and learners to find educational content in the form of learning objects from many different countries and providers.

The LRE helps Ministries and other content partners to become part of a federation of repositories. A measure of the success of the strategy is that, in the MELT project, 16 Ministries of Education in Europe are already making available approximately 40,000 learning resources and over 100,000 learning assets via a beta version of the LRE.

The following Icodeon products are being integrated into the ASPECT instance of the Learning Resource Exchange:

Icodeon SCORM Player
Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform

IMS CC and SCORM Implementation

2009-05-18T10:19:00.007+01:00

Icodeon is a member of the European Union ASPECT project.

ASPECT is a new, large-scale project supported by the European Commission's eContentplus Programme that will have its kickoff meeting in September 2008. The project is a 30-month, Best Practice Network for educational content that involves 22 partners from 15 countries, including 9 Ministries of Education (MoE), four commercial content developers and leading technology providers. For the first time, experts from all international standardisation bodies and consortia active in e-learning (CEN/ISSS, IEEE, ISO, IMS, ADL) will work together in order to improve the adoption of learning technology standards and specifications.

At the ASPECT workshop in Munich on May 15th 2009, three presentations were provided by Icodeon relating to the SCORM and IMS Common Cartridge specifications:

IMS Learning Impact 2009

2009-05-10T11:36:00.020+01:00

~ Icodeon is a contributing member of the IMS Global Learning Consortium - which represents more than 140 participant organizations from the global learning community. Organizations include software vendors, educational institutions, publishers, government agencies, multimedia content providers, and other consortia. IMS provides a neutral forum in which members work together to advocate the use of technology to transform education ~

Icodeon is a sponsor of the IMS Learning Impact 2009 conference in Barcelona.

The event is IMS Global Learning Consortium's annual conference that brings together the world's leading creators, vendors, users, and buyers of learning technology to participate in program tracks focused on the latest innovations in learning systems, digital learning content, the learning enterprise, and open technologies.

Presenters answer a key challenge question designed to inform the attendees on the state of innovation and best practices.

Warwick Bailey, Director, Icodeon Ltd, UK will be presenting the Icodeon SCORM Player and Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform as part of the "Learning Management, Collaborative, and Mobile Learning Program Track" on Tuesday 12th May at 11.15.

Download Warwick's presentation (8 MB) from the conference.

Icodeon is a Contributing Member of IMS, a member of the IMS Common Cartridge Alliance, and a member of the SCORM Technical Working Group.

Frequently Asked Questions

2009-04-21T10:28:00.067+01:00

What is Common Cartridge?

Common Cartridge is a technical specification that distils state-of-the-art practice in online education and training (Learn more).

What is the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform?

A software toolkit for building online education tools, apps and websites.
Technically, the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform is a RESTful Web API for IMS Common Cartridge. The Platform provides a set of "Web Services" that enable developers to build online education tools.

How does the Platform work?

Educational publishers create educational resources and package the content into "cartridges".

Once a cartridge is added to the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform, the Platform assigns a unique "address" (a URL) to each resource in the cartridge - every page, link, question, tool launch, discussion comment - so that each educational resource can be added into web pages, blogs, wikis and social networking sites.

What services does the Platform provide?

The Platform exposes a set of "Web Services" that provide:

use an easy to learn "URL Language" to request resources from the Platform (Learn more).

a choice of "represenations" that are returned with each response from the Platform. These representations include images, XML documents, HTML pages, and JavaScript Objects.

Together, the URL language and the representations are "building blocks" - so that tools, apps and widgets can be created by developers, and then embedded into blogs, wikis, social networking sites, desktops, mobile devices and so on. See also the blog entry about the administrative tools that are built into the Platform.

Tell me more about the Platform URL Language

The platform provides a "URL Language" for all requests to the platform.
For example, if you wanted to generate a thumbnail image of the first page of a cartridge, the URL would be formatted like this:
http://{hostname}/cartridges/{cartridge-name}
/items/@first.gif
You would just need to add in the name of the hosting web site (the {hostname}) and the name of the cartridge (the {cartridge-name}), and the platform generates the image ready for you to embed into your own website.
More formally, the "URL language" is a RESTful API for creating HTTP requests that have numerous response formats such as XML or HTML.
Learn more about the URL Language here.
The URL Language Documentation is being developed here.

Tell me more about the Platform Representations

The platform provides a choice of "representations" for all responses from the platform. For example, the platform can provide a choice of either .gif, .jpg or .png graphic formats for thumbnail images that are returned from requests.
For text based representations, the platfrom "representations" include XML, HTML, JSON and ATOM. These text based representations are conformant with well established designs, including:

Microformats: microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simple problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns (e.g. blogging). (Learn more).

OpenSocial: OpenSocial defines a common API for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds. Learn more).

By using well established designs for representations, developers can re-use existing libraries, style sheets and code to process the responses from the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform

Show me some examples

Together, the platform URL language and the platform representations are "building blocks" - so that tools, apps and widgets can be built by developers, and then embedded into blogs, wikis, social networking sites, desktops, mobile devices and so on.

Here are some example:

'Asssessment Widget': adds an assessment/quiz added to a web page (see a QTI Assessment widget embedded into a blog).

'Basic LTI Launch Widget': launches a secure web application using Basic Learning Tools Interoperability protocol (see a secure eBook reader launch widget embedded into a blog).

'Web Content Launch Widget': launches a web content object, such as a SCORM object (see a SCORM SCO launch embedded into a blog).

'Cartridge Explorer App': web application that browses all resources in a particular cartridge (see the Cartridge Explorer App.

What type of content can be added to a cartridge?

The cartridge supports the following types of content:

Web pages, PDF documents, WORD documents.

Assessment and quizzes.

Discussion forums.

Links into secure web applications.

Tell me more...

Like to know more? Why not leave a comment on this blog and we'll follow it up. The IMS Global FAQs for Common Cartridge are here.

QTI Assessment in a Blog

2009-04-13T12:03:00.038+01:00

~ The Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform supports assessments based on the popular QTI format. The platform API can be used for integrating these assessments into blogs, wikis, web pages and social networking sites ~

This page shows how quiz items from the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform can be embedded into a blog post, wiki or other web page.

All that is required to embed the quiz is a single HTML tag:

<!--add this line of code to your page-->
<script type="text/javascript" 
src="http://{host}/cartridges/
{cartridge}/items/{item}/assessments/@default.js">
</script>

When the single HTML tag is added to a web page, the quiz items are rendered.

Clicking the "Submit" button posts the form to a remote web service for processing and the response returns any marks and feedback available.

Clicking the "Next" button makes a request to a remote web service for the next question within a sequence.

~ QTI Assessment Tool from Icodeon CC Platform ~

In the Common Cartridge specification, quiz questions are required to be added using the Question and Test Interoperability (QTI) standard - an XML mark-up language for questions and assessments.

The example embedded into this page is a "QTI Assessment" - an ordered collection of individual question "QTI Items".

Each "QTI Item" defines its own rules for processing the response to the question and returning any feedback.

URL Language

2009-04-10T10:56:00.029+01:00

~ This page describes the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform API for integrating content into blogs, wikis, web pages and social networking sites ~

The platform uses a URL Language so that requests can be easily created for cartridge content.

For example, to create a reference to a thumbnail image of the first page in a cartridge, we create a request URL like this:

http://{host}/cartridges/{cartridge}/items/@first.gif

All that is required is to substitute in the name of the platform host server (the {host}) and the unique identifier of the cartridge (the {cartridge}) and the platform generates the thumbnail image.

The image can then be added to a web page as the source attribute value in an HTML image tag:

<img src="
http://api.common-cartridge.com/cartridges/
icodeon_spanish_cities/items/@first.gif"/>

The URL Language includes:

key words: these are part of the URL path, and are plural nouns, such as "cartridges" and "assessments".
path variables: these are part of the URL path. The value that was substituted in for the {cartridge} in our example above is a path variable.
selectors: these are part of the URL path. A selector ("@first") was used in our example to select the first item in a cartridge.
formats and extension variable: the part of the URL that is used to indicate the content type. The value of ".gif" in our example above is an extension variable. We used ".gif", but using ".jpg" or ".png" would mean that the platform would generate a different content type.
URL parameter key/value pairs: these are added after the path and extension variables as key/value pairs. For example, to create an image with a defined size, we could add the key/value pairs of "&_width=120&_height=90" to URL.
Puntuation characters: these can be included in URL. For example commas (,) are used represent a request for an ordered list.

The URL Language Documentation is being developed here.

So, to create a reference to a thumbnail image in the "jpg" format of the last page in a cartridge, we create a reference like this:

<img src="
http://www.common-cartridge.com/cartridges/
icodeon_spanish_cities/items/@last.jpg
?_width=120&_height=90"/>

When making requests to the Platform from external servers, we also need to add an API Key that the Platform generates for the external domain, so the final reference for the image is:

<img src="
http://www.common-cartridge.com/cartridges/
icodeon_spanish_cities/items/@last.jpg
?_api_key=abc123&_width=120&_height=90"/>

The URL language has many response formats (or "representations"), not just the graphical formats for screen shot thumbnails of pages within the cartridge.

The platform provides a choice of "representations" for all responses from the platform. For example, the platform can provide a choice of either .gif, .jpg or .png graphic formats for thumbnail images that are returned from requests.

For text based representations, the platfrom "representations" include XML, HTML, JSON and ATOM. These text based representations are conformant with well established designs, including:

Microformats: microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simple problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns (e.g. blogging). (Learn more).
OpenSocial: OpenSocial defines a common API for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds. Learn more).

By using well established designs for representations, developers can re-use existing libraries, style sheets and code to process the responses from the Icodeon Common Cartridge Platform