Emerging Technologies for Teaching and Learning

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Emerging Technologies for Teaching and Learning
Dr. Ronald J. Vetter Professor and
Chair Department of Computer Science University
of North Carolina at Wilmington
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Overview

• The New Information Economy
• Challenges Facing the Web
• Current Web Specifications and Practices
• Evolution to the Object Web
• Two Innovative Teaching and Learning Projects at
  UNCW
• Concluding Remarks

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Youre Involved in Something Big!

• The shift to an entirely new economy a new age
  a vastly different approach in the way
  organizations operate its called the
  Information Age.

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The New Information Economy

• This economy shift calls for different
  organizations, as well as different kinds of
  workers (Peter F. Drucker, The Post-Capitalist
  Society).

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A Changing Workplace

• Recent labor studies found, nearly one out of 3
  American workers had been with their employer for
  less than a year and almost 2 out of 3 for less
  than 5 years.
• Constant training, retraining, job-hopping, and
  even career-hopping, are becoming the norm.

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The Web a radical technology!

• A radical technology is one that will cause a
  fundamental change in the way organizations do
  business.
• How is the Web evolving and what changes can we
  expect to occur in the next 5 years?

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Challenges Facing the Web

• Prevalence of poor markup practices
• Weak implementations of style sheet support
• New kinds of browsers digital TVs, handheld PCs,
  phones, and cars
• Pressure to subset HTML for simple clients
• Pressure to extend HTML for richer clients

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Challenges Facing the Web, cont.

• Improvements to HTML Forms
• new kinds of input (microphones, cameras,
  scanners, pen-based, etc)
• regional variations for currency, phone numbers,
  dates, and postal addresses
• Rapid growth
• Standardization

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Current Specifications

• HTML 4.1 (released December 24, 1999)
• CSS1 and CSS2 (CSS level 3 being drafted)
• XML 1.0 (approved May 2001)
• XHTML 1.0 (approved January 2000)
• RDF (specification 1.0 published March 2000)
• XSL (version 1.0 draft just published)
• DOM (DOM level 3 just completed)

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CSS - Cascading Style Sheets

• Style sheets describe how documents are presented
  on screens, in print, or perhaps how they are
  pronounced.
• By attaching style sheets to structured documents
  on the Web (e.g., HTML), authors can influence
  the presentation of documents without sacrificing
  device-independence or adding new HTML tags.

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What does CSS look like?

• To change all ltH3gt headers to blue, centered,
  with a sans-serif font
• H3 font-family sans-serif
• color blue
• text-align center

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CSS Level 2

• CSS2 adds the concept of media-specific style
• sheets. For example, a style sheet can
• describe an aural rendering of a document
• as in
• _at_media speech
• BODY voice-family female
• H1 volume loud
• CSS2 also adds functionality for highlighting an
• element when a mouse moves over it - up until
• now this was possible only through scripts.

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XML 1.0 - The Extensible Markup Language

• XML is a method for putting structured data in a
  text file (enables data sharing over the Web).
• XML looks a bit like HTML but isn't HTML
  (although it has a common ancestry SGML).
• XML is text, but isn't meant to be read (it is a
  bit verbose, but on-the-fly compression will
  help).
• XML is license-free, platform-independent and
  well-supported.

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What does XML look like?

• Traditional HTML
• ltulgt
• ltligt Vetter, R., Ward, D., and Lugo, G.
  ltemgtH/PCs Ignore the Hypelt/emgt,
• RDG Publishing Inc., 2003. lt/ligt
• lt/ulgt

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What does XML look like?

• XML
• ltBookgt
• ltAuthorgtVetter, R.lt/Authorgt
• ltAuthorgtWard, D.lt/Authorgt
• ltAuthorgtLugo, G.lt/Authorgt
• ltTitlegtH/PCs Ignore the Hypelt/Titlegt
• ltPublishergtRDG Publishing Inc.lt/Publishergt
• ltYeargt2003lt/Yeargt
• lt/Bookgt
• Note HTML is layout-oriented, while XML is
• structure-oriented.

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Example A Bibliography Entry

• lt?xml version1.0 encodingUTF-8?gt
• lt!DOCTYPE Document SYSTEM bibliography.dtdgt
• lt!- This is an example bibliography. -gt
• ltBIBgt
• ltBOOK nicknameMade-up bookgt
• ltAUTHOR idvettergtVetter, R.lt/AUTHORgt
• ltAUTHOR idwardgtWard, D.lt/AUTHORgt
• ltAUTHOR idlugogtLugo, G.lt/AUTHORgt
• ltTITLEgtH/PCs Ignore the Hypelt/TITLEgt
• ltPUBLISHERgtRDG Publishing, Inc.lt/PUBLISHERgt
• ltYEARgt2003lt/YEARgt
• lt/BOOKgt
• ltBOOK nicknameMy Second Bookgt
• ltAUTHOR idrefvetter/gtltTITLEgt lt/TITLEgt
• lt/BOOKgt
• lt/BIBgt

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A DTD for the Bibliography Example

• lt!DOCTYPE bib
• lt!ELEMENT BIB (BOOK)gt
• lt!ELEMENT BOOK (AUTHOR, TITLE, PUBLISHER?,
  YEAR?)gt
• lt!ATTLIST BOOK
• isbn CDATA IMPLIED
• nickname CDATA IMPLIEDgt
• lt!ELEMENT AUTHOR (PCDATA)gt
• lt!ATTLIST AUTHOR
• id ID IMPLIED
• idref IDREF IMPLIEDgt
• lt!ELEMENT TITLE (PCDATA)gt
• lt!ELEMENT PUBLISHER (PCDATA)gt
• lt!ELEMENT YEAR (PCDATA)gt
• gt
• Note A DTD defines a grammar
  for documents.

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The Evolution to the Object Web
Client-Side versus Server-Side Programming

• On the Client
• Javascript, ActiveX Controls, Java Applets
• On the Server
• Perl, C, Unix Shell, Java Servlets, Coldfusion,
  Active Server Pages, Java Server Pages, and other
  proprietary languages (e.g., Lotus Dominos
  scripting language).

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The Evolution to the Object Web

• Static Web Pages HTML
• Web Pages with CGI scripts HTML Programming
  Language X (e.g., Perl or C)
• Dynamic HTML XML CSS Programming Language X
  (e.g., Javascript) DOM
• Database-Driven Web Pages HTML Programming
  Language X ODBC/JDBC
• The Object Web XML CORBA Java DOM
• Microsofts Object Web XML DCOM ActiveX

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Two projects at UNCW which take advantage of
these new technologies

• Project Numina http//aa.uncwil.edu/numina
• Digital Library Project http//aa.uncwil.edu/dl
  

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Teaching and Learning in 2020

• The emerging teaching (learning) environment is
  one based on customization, collaboration, and
  interaction.
• The one-size-fits-all textbook will be replaced
  by learning components, chosen to meet specific
  needs of specific students.
• Just-in-time learning and real-time feedback will
  help instructors monitor learning progress.

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Conclusion

• The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Invent
  It, Alan Kay, 1971.
• This presentation is located at
• http//www.uncwil.edu/people/vetterr/msu2001.ppt