AERACKMK.docx

1、AERACKMKE-slate: A black-and-white box approach to component computingC. Kynigos and M. KoutlisUniversity of Athens and Computer Technology Institutekynigoscti.gr, koutliscti.gr Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, 2002.IntroductionIn t

2、his paper, we review three aspects of the experience of E-slate development which are central to its design rationale and have played a crucial role in sustaining interest and funding since 1994. These are, the ways in which the user community may be empowered by building educational software throug

3、h authoring, the adoption of a variety of strategies to generate user communities and the conceptualization of the E-slate project as an on-going sequence of broadly defined multi-organizational projects fitting into the European Community policy to bring know-how from member states, academia and in

4、dustry closer together. We suggest that argumentation for component oriented technologies has focused too heavily on its potential large-scale economics of production and that a broader view of this technology is needed to understand and support its development and widespread use. We discuss these t

5、hree aspects of user empowerment, socially grounded theory of use and long-term development, support and service sustainability as crucial for the component movement to progress, but also as its strength in relation to standalone technologies for computational media. History and principles of design

6、 and developmentGeography meets mathematics and then expandsTwo of the three original founders of the E-slate project were experts in G.I.S. systems looking to develop software for geography education (Koutlis and Hatzilakos, 1996). The types of functionality, the sheer volume of content and the typ

7、es of representations for geographical information systems required quite heavy development and technically complex pieces of software. The idea to build a platform making it possible to expand to exploratory software to do mathematics with and to explore possible combinations of functionality enabl

8、ing inter-subjective exploration and constructions brought about the rationale for a variety of components, user authoring by building component configurations, scriptability and reconstructibility (Kynigos et. al., 1997). Having (just) survived the open-doc fiasco, the putting of user authoring to

9、the test was only made possible two-three years ago after the E-slate desktop environment became reasonably stable and the number of generic components large enough (around 40). So, along with cheaper software production and proliferation through the re-usability angle, the rationale behind the E-sl

10、ate project has been explicitly to investigate the idea that building component configurations can be creative and interesting as a process for epistemological and educational reflection and for learning about component functionalities. This is based on a black and white box, or principled deep stru

11、cture access approach highlighting the idea of component connectivity. E-slate is thus designed as a platform for authoring educational software across subject domains by means of creating configurations amongst a set of generic components. The platform is also designed to be able to host any piece

12、of software developed by third parties with only minor changes to allow for connectivity with other components. Series of multi-organizational projects since 1995E-slate has been essentially developed by two collaborating groups making use of the contemporary era in the European Community policy for

13、 funding multi-organizational R&D projects to enhance collaboration between member states and between industry and academia. This provided the opportunity for relatively long standing funding allowing for large labor development of both the E-slate desktop and 40 generic components and the generatio

14、n of user communities at different levels including research on different aspects of teaching, learning and authoring with e-slate software. It is important to note the Greek context, since the relatively late development of wide-spread university based research has resulted in the European Union be

15、ing by far the most frequent source of R&D funds (the equivalent to the NSF in Greece has been created only recently). Research and development priorities therefore are influenced by a widely diverse cultural web of societies which only in the last 30 years or so have made explicit strides for co-de

16、velopment.E-Slate has been financed by a series of European Community based R&D projects channeled through the EEC direct or through the Greek General Secretariat for R&D. Typically, the priority has been for these projects to explicitly support collaboration between a variety of organizations (i.e.

17、 companies, computer science university departments, and end user organizations such as schools and education university departments) in some cases on an international level. E-Slate has also received funding from the Greek Ministry of Education sources within the framework of “Odysseia”, the policy

18、 for integrating new technologies in schools. This is important because the funding from this source is not exclusively for research, but rather for the implementation of Educational Policy. Two collaborating teams as core design, development and user community supportThe E-Slate project has so far

19、been centered at C.T.I. and funded by a series of projects involving collaborations with partners from academia, industry and schools. One partner, the Educational Technology Lab at the University of Athens has had continual contribution in design, microworld development, teacher education and use i

20、n schools from the outset. It is thus reasonable to view the E-Slate project as carried through by a wider two legged team of developers and education experts. The technical development team, lead by M. Koutlis at CTI, is comprised of more than six full-time programmers working at C.T.I. on a projec

21、t basis. The education team, lead by C. Kynigos, is comprised of Ph.D. and post doc students, who typically spend around 4 years on the team. Through the years, the teams have gone through different phases of close collaboration and more remote co-operative work. Continual feedback and exchange of i

22、deas and know how has been a feature of this work either by means of co-design of E-slate functionalities and components or by means of beta testing and drawing experience from the user communities in the field. Although the collaboration began with emphasis on the notion of integrated (rather than

23、fragmented) development, the breakdown of work necessary to cope with its rapid expansion, resulted in the emergence of the following activities (Kynigos, in press): component architecture design and development (desktop) software design and development (components) secondary development of componen

24、t configuration (authoring with E-slate) activity design and development (documented microworlds) collaboration with schools and school support teacher education research involving classroom and teacher seminar observation, tests and interviewsThe technical group have mainly worked in the first two

25、types of activity, but have also had significant contribution in the third, fourth and fifth. The education group have respectively had significant contribution to design in the first two activities as well as their work in the others. This engagement in a mutually accountable larger project and int

26、egration of work has resulted in a considerable degree of hybrid know-how developed in two distinct organizations (for a discussion of this issue, see Kynigos, in press). This process has not been without problems due to both external circumstances and to the nature of the work itself. In the initia

27、l stages of the project, for instance, there were problems with the development platform “Open Doc”, which was discontinued in November 97. This resulted in great difficulties in the early E-Slate projects, YDEES and IMEL, and a large lag in time for redesign and development in java. It also resulte

28、d in lag of communication between the education team and the development team since the former was tired with the problems created by “Open Doc” and an anti-macintosh climate in Greece and cautious with believing that E-Slate would reappear working adequately on a Windows O.S. Moreover, the 5 school

29、s where E-Slate tried the “Open Doc” version experienced horrendous problems and the consequent loss of confidence by teachers and students. The development team on the other hand worked extra hard and focused on re-developing the E-Slate platform in Java, feeling - justifiably so - that there was n

30、o time to “waste” on collaborations. In fact, the whole issue about scriptability, which is now one of the main features of E-Slate, was almost abandoned since there was no funding to re-do it in Java (The project now uses Daniel Azumas Java Turtle Tracks). Not unlike others, the project has thus ha

31、d to deal with the continuing tension between using state of the art development platforms and producing software that can operate in real life situations from the early stages of its development. It has also had to make choices between involving users in lab or real schools situations and has mainl

32、y opted for the latter in order to enhance the understandings of what it would take for the software to operate as a vehicle for educational change in the system.Large and continual expert labor to develop the system and sustain the core user communitiesPart of the rationale for re-use enabled by co

33、mponent-oriented architectures is that it makes it possible to develop a low-labor technological solution to proliferating educational software. The argument, central to the ESCOT and EoE projects, is that this software is produced in an incrementally cheaper way taking advantage of the growing library of applets