HTML5 + JS: The Keys to Open Education
Karma:The Code Less, Teach MoreSoftware Framework
Bryan Willson
Berryhttp://[email protected]: CC-BY
3.0
OLE Nepal
Demo First, Talk Later
Before you wade your way though these slides, please take a look
at the demo. If you are a web developer, please take a look at the
code.
http://karma.sugarlabs.org/
Promise and Peril of Education Software
Educational Software has tremendous promise, but . . .
It is far to expensive to produceWe spend too much time focused
on the engineering side (coding) and not enough on the education
side (teaching)
Reinventing the Wheel
Most educational software packages use proprietary toolkits
(flash) and the few open-source packages use heavily-customized and
poorly documented libraries. As a result, it is often easiest to
create your own tools, widgets, human interface guidelines, and
workflows from scratch
So Let's Steal . . .
The tooling, widgets, and platform from another industry, the
web development industry
There is a plethora of fast evolving web development tools that
are now mature enough for virtually any educational software
package and they are both free as in cost and free as in speechThe
Openweb Toolkit
The Openweb Toolkit
JavaScript
HTML 5
CSS
SVG
Often used in conjuction with JavaScript frameworks like jQuery,
dojo, mootools
But Flash is the Standard!
Flash is the standard for developing proprietary educational
software
But the open-source Flash communityis small and not very
active
That means tooling is limited for everyone whether you work on
proprietary or free software
OLE Nepal
I have been developing open-source educational software at OLE
Nepal for the last 3 yearsWe have a team of:7 software
engineers
3 graphic designers
3 instructional designers
We primarily use Flash
Openweb Envy
We have seen explosive growth in the resources for web
developers over the last five yearsMillions of tutorials
Lots of tools
Helpful text editors
Powerful free frameworks like jQuery
And Flash has not kept pace
A Statistically Insignificant Metric
At 15:43 GMT+5 on January 1st 2010The number of users in these
freenode irc channels#actionscript 19#flex 45#javascript 275#jquery
394#dojo 74 there are more web related channels not listed but no
more flash-related ones that I am aware of
Openweb Tools Multiplying
like Rabbits
Growth of jQuery has been amazing, now used on 30% of all
websitesYou can now do everything with openweb tools that you can
do with flash and soon you will be able to do moreGoogle, Apple,
and others aggressively funding open-source web toolsPlease note
that support and documentation for HTML5 and SVG are still quite
immature
OLE Nepal's Progress
Summer 2010, hope to move all developers from flash to openweb
platform
Currently, we have 2.5 developers working full-time to convert a
set of legacy lessons to the openweb platform
Should have 60+ classroom-ready activities completed by end of
March 2010
What is Karma?
Karma is a minimal JavaScript library and set of tools that
makes it easier to manipulate HTML 5 and SVG in ways often required
in learning activities. It plays very well with jQueryKarma
leverages popular openweb technologies. It is not redundant to
them.Karma will also include a set of administrative scripts,
workflows, and user interface widgets built with jQuery UI
Questions?
Check the demos: http://karma.sugarlabs.orgSee the blog
http://karmaeducation.orgContact me [email protected] the
Google Grouphttp://groups.google.com/group/karmajs
