Labs4Wikiversity

Overview

This project aims to provide interactive teaching tools for the Wikiversity community learning site.

What is needed is a free, open, and widely available tool that can be used to create interactive features embedded into web pages served by a wiki-based site. Currently, the basis for this tool will be the Java applet that is included within the downloaded HTML syntax, is packaged in auditable and authenticated JAR files, and runs inside the browser sandbox to minimize risk to the learners in the Wikiversity community.

Why? And why Java?

Wikiversity is a community of learners, in a free and open environment.
Besides reading, writing text and discussion between learners, new ways of learning will be part of Wikiversity, including interactive tools that let learners explore and understand concepts beyond the standard descriptive mode (text or mathematics). These pages are called "labs" to elicit the vision of learners interacting with "equipment" or "behavior" in a setting conducive for open inquiry.

Not many technologies are currently available with which to obtain a high performing graphical feature set, that are as well open and freely available. Also, since the interactive tool will "run" on the clients web browser, one needs to address security issues.
Java is a widely accepted and supported, interpreted language, that provides the "applet" infrastructure that can be embedded within a web page. Although, Java Script would also be a possible platform, Java is superior in generating graphics of arbitrary shape that can be manipulated and changed fast.

What is provided?

In this project we want to capture Java source code that will be compiled into both the applet code for each lab, and the infrastructure code for reuse.
Additionally, make file compilation support files to create the necessary JAR's are included in the source code drop for the Windows nmakeand GNU gmake.