European governments and organisations are helping to make it easier for schools and colleges to share resources and use interactive whiteboards.
Becta has made a technical specification available for a common file format for interactive whiteboards, and a viewer application and further support will follow in autumn 2009.
Support across Europe
A European Schoolnet interactive whiteboard working group is supporting this work by finding common areas of concern, sharing experience, highlighting policy and identifying examples of innovative use of interactive whiteboards in the countries represented by the group (Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom).
The working group will publish a set of case studies on the introduction and use of interactive whiteboards, highlighting examples of:
- current best practice
- the challenges faced by schools in countries that are at an early stage of introducing these technologies
- schools that have implemented similar pedagogical approaches using a range of alternative technologies.
During its work, the group will also:
- examine different strategies for the professional development of teachers in relation to interactive whiteboards
- encourage interactive whiteboard vendors to make content more widely available via the European Schoolnet's new learning resource exchange service for schools
- investigate how issues related to interactive whiteboard use can be addressed more coherently at a European level.
Interest in the common file format has also come from European education ministries, who are looking to procure interactive whiteboard solutions on a national scale and benefit from the wealth of experience the UK education system has had in this arena.
Specification
The technical specification was produced in consultation with interactive whiteboard suppliers. All major whiteboard vendors have agreed to support the common file format and we expect it to be adopted as a common industry-wide standard.
Testing and previewing files
The next step will be to publish a viewer application, to allow developers to test files and teachers to preview files in the common file format.
The viewer will be released under a GNU Lesser Public Licence (LGPL) and will provide a focus for future open source community development. The viewer will deliberately contain minimal functionality, as suppliers will be encouraged to embed the format into their own products. To support this, a ‘C’ code library will be released in autumn 2009, under a FreeBSD-style licence.
This approach is in line with the Government action plan Open Source, Open Standards and Re–Use (#ukgovOSS).
Hmm. I'll take a look at that - I wonder if a viewer application can be written in JavaScript?
Hi dhicks,
the current viewer app is being written in Java, but I think there's an argument for a browser plugin/extension.. I'd be interested to hear other peoples views on this.
Rob
Sort of makes you wonder why they didn't use an application like Inkscape as a starting point. It has most of the basic tools that would be needed for an IWB application suite, it supports SVG and is written in Python which means it is very accessible to those new to programming. Sixth formers could realistically contribute Python modules to do useful things, improve code etc. While we can't gaurantee to get learners involved in coding projects, we can at least make it more likely by planning things that enable wider participation. A key reason that OOo has difficulty in attracting developers is that the C++ development environment takes a qualified developer up to two years to learn. The barrier to participation is too high.
The specification actually looks quite clear and understandable. It seems to be using a subset of SVG, so maybe Inkscape's code simply wasn't suitible. As this is a standard produced by existing IWB software vendors I imagine they're veering towards the development process they're already using, which is probably C or some other compiled language as they write desktop applications. It strikes me, however, that it should be quite easy to implement a viewer as a straight web-based application - all the sound/video/Flash embedding is already done for you, you just need to parse a spot of XML and draw some graphics primitives.
Hello again dhicks, and Ingotion,
Yep, you got it, the code library is being written in C because the aim is to get suppliers to adopt the standard in their applications.
The aim of the viewer will primarily act as a test harness for developers to test IWB CFF files generated by their applications, though it's obviously useful as a preview tool for teachers to check content before use.
Rob
Just had a quick look through the spec, and my impression is that the native SVG support in Firefox will get you 90% of the way. The remainder should be do-able via javascript and some HTML links. It might even be possible to associate an XSLT that adds the required javascript and html to the iwb XML file. Feed that to firefox, and have it rendered in the browser on the fly.
If true, that'd give some vendors another route to implementation: plunder all or part of the FF codebase. I do suspect that I may have overlooked some gnarlier constructs, though. Is there a set of testfiles somewhere that demonstrate the full range of the spec?
Okay, so that would work in Firefox (and, I assume, for Chrome and Safari (and Opera?)), or for people with the Adobe plugin installed for IE - does anyone know of an existing JavaScript-based SVG renderer that works cross-browser?
I've tried copy-and-pasting the examples from the specification document into a text file and viewing in Firefox, they render as valid SVG. The transform idea is an interesting one. I would be interested in getting hold of some more examples files, too. Is there a developers discussion area somewhere for people working on the viewer or IWB applications - are they all hanging out on a particular discussion forum or something?
Hi dhicks,
at the minute development is being done by RM on behalf of Becta, in consultation with the major IWB vendors. the main outputs will be available in Sept, and there will be a Sourceforge(or similar) site for the OSS outputs... but there are 30 hand coded example files being created so the viewer can be tested. Once these are done perhaps we could setup a collaborative workspace to test out Wilbert's ideas if you are interested?
Rob
Yes, I'd like to get hold of those 30 example files at some point if possible - I trust the whole idea is that they will simply be freely available, not something you have to sign an NDA to look at?
I've managed to get something to render the first example file given in the specification, but the second example uses multiple pages. Unless I'm mistaken, multiple pages don't appear in SVG documents until version 1.2 (still in draft), but the SVG schema referred to in the IWB specification is version 1.0. Is this a mistake, or am I misunderstanding something? Who is Wilbert - is he the author of the IWB specification document? Any idea how I get hold of him?
I'm not an expert in the details of XML etc but I do know that the OpenDocument Fellowship did a basic Firefox viewer for open document files with relatively little resource. Perhaps Xul runner would be a good development option?
Sounds interesting, I'll have a look,
appreciate the suggestions
cheers rob