OpenDocument Format + Flash = Open Content Templates?">OpenDocument Format + Flash = Open Content Templates?
A thought just occurred to me, and I hope it spurs some discussion from the Flash coders that are among us.
So OpenDocument Format is an approved ISO standard for Office-type documents, including spreadsheets. In fact, ISO is in the process of moving the standard forward to version 1.2, where it’s expected that tables will be supported in the presentations created in ODF.
Lots of us who build custom courses are using our own XML Schema to fill-in the content of Flash-based online courses. But… what if a bunch of us used the same format for our XML? A little over a year ago, some of us got together via the [os-flash.org](http://www.osflash.org/) project for “Edumatic” and after a couple of very nice “how do you do?” emails, it plain died. I was reminded of its existence yesterday when I got my automated notice about my subscription to the newsgroup in my email.
But back then, we were talking about how do we even write the XML format so it’s the same. Well… we *have* an open standard that’s not only approved and maintained internationally… but it’s freaking FREE. So here’s my thinking:
There’s no shortage of tools that can create an ODF presentation (OpenOffice.org and NeoOffice on the Mac are but a few). But Google is supporting ODF, also with their online GoogleDocs application. So the authoring tools are there. We just need a common way to support them.
That’s where some Flash scripting and graphic/multimedia design moxy comes in. Imagine a workflow where anyone can author the learning content anywhere on free-to-use tools that are also easy to use (in other words, not much change management needed to do it). Then with a little scripting savvy, a developer simply takes the ODF export of the presentation, uses it to populate a course and makes the tweaks required (goal state: none) to put it into an LMS.
Now you have an incredibly fast way to take the abundance of content in your organization and put it into a digestible format for online learning in current systems.
So if you’ve read this far, the next question is… who’s interested? Because this is definitely not a one-man job.
Count me in!
Count me in too! I have been waiting for someone to stand up and agree that this is one of the gaps in our eLearning development processes, standards, and systems. The design cartridge (what I’m calling it) standard will enable true sharing of the sub-atomic components AND aggregate formulations of courseware outputs. Unplug the standard cartridge from one system, connect it to another – boom it should work. SCORM is fine, but my customers aren’t leveraging it. I’ve been screaming that we need to focus sharing efforts at a higher level, upstream from the final output for several years!
One of the issues to balance is the complexity of the DTD. You see alot of document standards that really jam a lot of stuff in there.
We are currently using MSWord (don’t vomit) as a ‘database’ using a row based storyboard definition with standard field names. We parse the row groups to separate XML navigation and content files. Our XMLSettingsReader sucks up the content and tells Flash what to do with it. One template file could accomodate a smattering of courses. Caveat — multimedia developers dislike this very much…
Abstraction is the question. And how the abstraction will work (one tier = direct, two tiers = transitional). Babbling – let’s do this thing…
Other areas to look: DITA, S1000D, XCOMPA
Using ODF is a cool idea for a free type solution. In my experience, free type solutions are limited by the virtue of the resources invested. Another step beyond this is creating a common standard to drive the service market into greater efficiency and tool function. There’s room for both, in my opinion.
You’ve piqued my interest.
So I’ve been letting this stew a bit more, and I realized that maybe there’s some things anyone venturing on this path might need to think about:
Adobe Labs bought the company that build a Flash version of Office (built with Flex, I think) for that piece of code. I believe it used the ODF format. Don’t know if the code they’ve used is open or not, but knowing that someone else has done it already to some degree has to be a help, right?
ODF may not be very stabile, as I just read yesterday about how they were leaving one standards group to join another. So there may be some politicking around that camp.
i’ve been working on this off and on for a couple of years… it’s a great concept that gets painfully convoluted sometimes. my biggest issue has been this: the more content you put into the course via XML, the less flexibility the course developer has when creating their layouts.
i’ve seen a lot of other people’s courses, and (sorry guys and gals) a lot of them are boring and text-based. these suit the XML format just fine. but when you really want to get into the nitty-gritty and build a course highly customized for the topic, with a ton of interactions and custom doo-dads, the XML-based system starts showing its limitations.
but… if we can get it to the point where it DOES offer great flexibility, i’ll be the first in line to use it!
side note: ThinkingCap (and by extension, their partner EdCetera Training) is a great example of using XML for course building. I’ve only seen demos, but i like the concept: the course’s XML schema dictates what is and isn’t allowed in the course, becoming an enforcer of instructional design pedagogy. sweet.
second side note: in my own XML work, i was leaning towards having our staff use Microsoft InfoPath for filling out the XML-based content. we already have it as part of Office, and it’s an XML-native application. i heartily welcome suggestions for an alternative (besides Altova).