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December 31, 2006

'Have just discovered Ajax

I was reading an article somewhere (gah, forgot where) and it referenced something called Ajax, short for "Asynchronous JavaScript and XML".

I was thinking about my tabbed item selection service, and about how the user's choices in one tab will affect the adapted "advice" under the other two tabs. In my existing implementation, the content that is shown/hidden depending on the current tab selection is given to the web browser in this format:

(err... copied to this external text file. As always, I struggle with showing markup on a web page. =) )

... You can just go View--> Source under my tabbed item selection service and see for yourself. For a rant about CSS positioning and browser compatibilities, enjoy this.

Basically, each "tab" is its own < div > on the web page. I just have a little DHTML menu to show/hide whichever < div > the user picks. The middle tab is the main work area and is the default tab. The user can complete all necessary tasks using the middle tab only; the other two are just supplemental information if they choose to seek help.

Any time the user clicks on one of the items in the middle tab, the advice in the other two tabs adapts. The user can choose when they want to look at it by going into one of the other tabs. So, if they wanted to keep working and uninterrupted by advice from the computer (well, at least, the unsubtle advice) then they can opt not to check out any of the advice under the tabs.

Basically, this means that the code fragment I showed you earlier is all that needs to get re-sent to the browser each time the user clicks a checkbox. My existing system is actually sending back the entire HTML document (derived from a jsp page) : The header at the top, the "special instructions" from the teacher, the bulleted list of current selections, the links to Handy Rescources, etc. etc.

In the actual implementation, I do have all of the JavaScript and CSS refereced in external files, but we still do have a lot of code that gets sent back-and-forth each time, unnecessarily. In fact, it looks like there is more static stuff than there is dynamic stuff!

Which means, if I am reading this properly, that the usage of Ajax could cut the size of my client-server messages by more than half. It would not change the number of client-server interactions, but, each message would be much shorter. And, I wouldn't necessarily be sending HTML markup back to the client; instead, I'd just send the raw data and the browser would do all of the calculation required to put the web page together.

I think I've got that right.

It looks like Ajax is attempting to move the "brains" for page formatting further into the client side; the web application would still dictate exactly how the page looks, but, it's the web browser that would render the data into HTML rather than having the web server both compute the data and render it into a user-viewable form.

Woops, it's almost 10:00 - time for me to go! Bye!

Posted by Frozone Permalink on December 31, 2006 09:20 AM | Comments (2)
categorized under Semantic Web

Comments

I think your website is fantastic!!

Posted by: Ben at January 2, 2007 07:39 AM

Why thank you! :-)

Posted by: Steph at January 2, 2007 10:23 AM

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Index to Steph's Notes

Feb. 24th 2007 - Weee! This new part of my website is not an entry, but rather a permanent fixture whose purpose is to "Look Down on All Those Notes With Some Grand Vision of Organization". Wish me luck. LOL
  1. Representing meta-data (fuel) & the different kinds of "hooks" that intelligent systems can use (how fuel is injected into the motor of the engine)
    1. Motivation: Semantic net / Rationalizable to a machine
      1. Semantic network
      2. Genetic graph
      3. Prerequisite AND/OR graph
      4. Constraint Satisfaction Problems
      5. Bayesian networks / causal graphs
    2. Technology & Philosophy: RDF, modus ponens,
      1. Predicates, Logic & situation calculus
        1. When in doubt, do some math
    3. What kinds of data? - What kinds of meta-data would an AIEd system possibly need, and how is it represented?
      1. task domain knowledge
      2. "is-prerequisite-to"-type knowledge
        1. Jackpot! A pedagogical ontology
      3. interactions with learning objects & other learners - (location, composition is-a/part-of, sequencing by restricting navigation, personalization, ontologies for LO context)
        1. Types of 'Ecological' data
      4. lesson plans, curriculum plans, practicing sessions (What is stored, what is generated on the fly? What is remembered?)
        1. Agent memory
    4. How to organize it - When is it stored in a database? Meta-data? Agent memory banks? Protocols? Repositories? XML files? Home-servers? WSDL services? Frameworks? Portable banks? P2P access?
      1. Database of object-agent interactions
      2. Concept of "Home" on a P2P network -- maybe the bulk of a learning object's usage data is on its home server and can be queried using WSDL or something ? Similar homes for each student's usage history, etc. Baggage problem.
    5. Links to the ontologies
      1. referring to a concept/relationship - ex. AgentOwl?
        1. Using Vocabularies in JENA
        2. Referring to a concept/relationship in an ontology
        3. Improved: Referring to a concept/relationship in an ontology
        4. Using OWL to reference constraints in tutoring systems
    6. Generation of this data
      1. Rationalization: For use by other AIEd systems
      2. What is generated - discuss items under part I.C.
      3. When it's generated - describe procedural model, which parts of the engine generate what (isa-part-of data, XML feeds, web services, meta data bout groups and collaboration, protocols, examples Friend of A Friend FOAF project)
        1. Thinking about the system's RDF output
      4. Technical notes of HOW it's generated: JENA, issues of implementation demo, my Hermione & Ron agent examples, lol
      5. Usage of this generated data - see part IV. A.
  2. Given the engine, who uses it?
    1. Students / Learners / "Me"
      1. instructional planning, student model, pre-requisites, tutoring, coaching, collaboration,constructivism
    2. Teachers / Educators / "Me"
      1. putting together lessons
      2. be able to browse through task domain knowledge in an objective / encyclopaedia format, then be able to pick-and-choose what you need for your students
      3. compose examples, design explanations, pull together diagrams, learning objects, etc. Haystack Relo?
    3. Administration / Governement / Structure / Crowd Control
      1. as restrictions/obstacles/sand pit to the robot in agent environment
      2. can't just have a swarm of students and teachers out there -- need structure of courses, curriculum, objectives, requirements (at least, we do in this day and age!) - Report cards, evaluation, feedback
      3. government, marks, certificates, requirements, funding, curriclum, attendance, delinquent, non-attending, motivation
      4. school''s images, goals, strengths, payroll, HR, security, accounts, permissions, privacy
      5. registration, failed courses
  3. User Environment -- How does this engine work? What does the user see on the screen?
    1. Introduction - Given a background in educational psychology, how does the system present itself -- what does the user see, and were does this data come from? Links to thoughts from part I.)
    2. Task Domain Browsing - Suppose you're you're just idly browsing through the "raw" content. How would it look when it's not wrapped around a learning-context or lesson or tutorial or anything. 'Cross between browsing a raw task domain ontology and browsing a learning object repository.
      1. Cleaning up the data -- Visualizing the data for humans to pick through the task domain and work on it. Suppose the "Subject Expert" discovers an advancement in science and needs to update the "world's" domain knowledge. (I used the "Subject Expert" terminology from Ontologies to Support Learning Design Context - Thanks Chris) How would they make corrections to ontologies and learning objects, or at least point the users of "old" objects towards adopting the newer ones.
      2. "Modes" - Learning & Lessons / Checklist - Homework, Assignments, Courses being taken / Collaborative mode / Teaching mode / Calendar- email -adminisrative mode -- See also the different kinds of scenarios in the ActiveMath system
        1. Educating myself about Education
  4. Evolution of this engine
    1. target some key implementation hooks discussed in part I - design an experiment/demo
      1. scrape a page - (Note, scraping can only give objective data, not in-context dat)
      2. LO repository - related to browsing the task domain?
      3. a learners "To Do" list - where does it come from? Assignments, courses.
      4. sample group scenario
      5. sample teacher lesson planning
      6. sample data "left behind"
      7. sample use of that data
    2. Data mining (for what? lol )
      1. discovery / generation of ontologies - when do you need to hunt for them, and when do you have to have a solidly-known & predictable ontology?
        1. Ontological Engineering: taking a first bite
    3. I/O - where it happens, which languages, protocols, which agents perform i/o and when, precepts, actuators
      1. Role Assignments
        1. Levels of authorization in web applications
      2. My Environment Adapts to me
        1. Displaying feedback from the server on JSP pages (Software engineering considerations)
        2. Sketching out a design (Content planning vs. Delivery planning)
      3. agent negotiations / social structures / ummm... Web 2.0 ?
        1. Towards student modelling
        2. Anatomy of an agent
    4. garbage collection of meta data
      1. Artificial Intelligence & Evolution
        1. Memory Culling: Necessary part of intelligence? (artificial or human)
        2. Applications for the Genetic/Evolutionary algorithm
      2. open learning environments
  5. Agents, pets, grouping, Community modelling
    1. Protocols - finding groups, cyber dollars, state diagrams (?)
    2. "Community Studies" - graphs & communication hubs, types of communities (free-for-all, hierarchy of authority, etc.)
    3. implications of joining a community - what do you share, which parts of your student model are relevant
    4. Walls & sand traps -- deliberate restrictions as problem-solving for learning
    5. Communication channels - individual-to-individual, individual-to-community, chat channels, agent-only "administrative" communications, ex. requests for related learning objects in a particular community, etc.
  6. Educational/Pedagogical focus (this part probably shouldn't be its own section but rather incorporated into the whole picture, but it's separate for me right now because I'm still only just starting to learn about it.)
    1. Semantics - what there is to talk about in Education
      1. ex. Merril's First Principles of Instruction, linking educational terms to AI terms
        1. Educating myself about education
    2. Pedagogical skills for tutors -- supporting human *and* artifical tutors
      1. Modelling teaching strategies
      2. What is teaching?
      3. Decision theory for teaching strategies
      4. My pedagogical issues
      5. Ontological comparisons as spatial relationships
    3. Student modelling - what the machine needs to know about the student, pedagogically-speaking, about learning history/preferences
    4. Roles - Simulated students, Coaches, Tutors, Teachers,