FLE3 - Future Learning Environment | |
for Collaborative Knowledge Building and Design
Giedre Kligyte
ABSTRACT
Keywords
FUTURE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT 3 (FLE3)
On the other hand Fle3 can be used just with a single PC computer. Each user may login to the system with their own user name and password and work with the Fle3, rotating the use of the computer. Connection to "public Internet" is not required but recommended as students may use Internet to browse and search information related to their studies or project work. Fle3 users, teachers and students, can use Fle3 with standard web browsers. Fle3 is designed to work with every web browser (Netscape, Opera, Explorer, Mozilla, Konqueror) on every operating system (Unix, Linux, Mac OS, Windows, etc.). Furthermore Fle3 is usable with standard web browsers in hand held computers and mobile phones (e.g. Nokia Communicator). Fle3 is easy to localize to different languages. Currently Fle3 supports twelve languages. Fle3 is Open Source13 and Free Software6 (also called Libre Software) released under GNU the General Public License (GPL)7. The license is protecting users freedom to use, modify and distribute Fle3. Fle3 is a Zope product, written in Python. Zope is Open Source application server that runs on almost all Operating Systems (Linux, MacOs X, *BSD, etc.) and Microsoft Windows.
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WebTop | |
Only the owner of a WebTop may create, edit and remove items in her WebTop, but visitors may read the items. The WebTop also includes a shared "course folder" for each course or collaborative project. The shared folder is available in the Knowledge Building and Jamming, modules as well. |
Knowledge Building | |
The Progressive Inquiry knowledge type set contains the following knowledge types: Problem;
The knowledge types scaffold students to carry out research kind of activities, which are deepening their understanding of the area under study. Complementary the knowledge type set made for collaborative design contains the following knowledge types: Design Context;
To write their contributions to the knowledge building, the system offers a checklist (Picture 3) explaining the participants what kind of things the note should include to advance the process. E.g. when writing New Information -note in design knowledge building the Flea "agent" asks from the author:
Remember to mention the source where you got the new information: - by interviewing users
The knowledge type sets guides students to think adequate and important things related to the process, and this way helps students to write more significant notes to the database. As an aid for helping users to follow the knowledge building discussion, users may take different kind of views to the knowledge building database by sorting the notes as a discussion thread, by writer, by knowledge type of by date. An advanced search engine for the knowledge building is under development and will be published in the next version. |
Jamming | |
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Course and User Management | |
FLE3 USER AND DEVELOPER COMMUNITY
Fle3 research and development follows the procedure of action research, which can be described as an interacting spiral and loop of (1) looking, (2) thinking and (3) acting.16 In our core research and development team in the UIAH Media Lab the looking stage takes place by using Fle3 ourselves. From other users we also collect User Stories that propose changes and new features. Thinking and analyzing possible new features is done in cooperation with pedagogical researchers of the Centre for Research on Networked Learning and Knowledge Building, University of Helsinki.1 All potential features are considered deeply from pedagogical, usability and accessibility points of view. Finally the research and development group takes action by designing and building the first prototypes for testing. The aim is to get into rapid prototyping process where possible new features are quickly implemented to be part of the software and tested with real users in a real situation. Rapid prototyping is a method used in design process for problem solving, exploration and sharing of thoughts.9 DISCUSSION
Most of the Open Source / Free Software is done by hackers for hackers. Most of the hackers doing software are highly skilful programmers. For this reason usability and learnability have not been any crucial questions. In Fle3 research and development we have tried to combine the best hackers' ways of working with meaningful design process to ensure that end-users not familiar with computer technology and software can also benefit from Open Source and Free Software. In addition we have tried to design similar kind of tools for schools and universities, which are used by the hacker community. In the growth of Open Source / Free Software, critical tools have been email, FTP, newsgroups, IRC and WWW (all these tools were developed by the community itself). Without these tools there would not be such community of developers as there is today. There is analogy between the tools of the Open Source / Free Software community and the tools of Fle3. In the case of Fle3, the WebTops are like home directories in Unix world, Knowledge Building is one kind of easy to use newsgroup application with specific pedagogical and cognitive support and the Jamming module can be seen as a Concurrent Versioning System 2 (CVS) for the rest of us. However, Fle3 is made not for the Open Source / Free Software community but for ordinary people in schools, universities and other communities. For this reason the usability, accessibility, learnability and pedagogical aspects are critical. Fle3 research and development is still work in process. The software is already released, but a lot of pedagogical testing, evaluation and research must be done to recognize and develop the best practices of using the software. Naturally, Fle3 software is also under ongoing reviewing and may change in time. Cooperation with teachers, students and pedagogical researchers around the world are essential when designing and developing this kind of specific tool.
REFERENCES
EML - http://eml.ou.nl Fle3 - http://fle3.uiah.fi Free Software Foundation Europe - http://www.fsfeurope.org GNU General Public License - http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html Himanen, P., Torvalds, L., Castells, M. (2001). The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age. Random House, 2001. Horton, G, Radcliffe, D (1995). Nature of Rapid Proof-of-Concept Prototyping. Journal of Engineering Design 1995, Vol 6 Issue 1. Leinonen, T.; Virtanen, O.; Hakkarainen, K.; Kligyte, G. (2002). Collaborative Discovering of Key Ideas in Knowledge Building. Proceedings of the Computer Support for Collaborative Learning 2002 Conference. Boulder, Colorado, USA, January 7-11, 2002. Leinonen, T., Mielonen, S., Pietarile, J., Kekkonen, I., Kligyte, G., Toikkanen, T.
Mielonen, S. (1997). Report of the Preliminary Study of New Learning Environments (in Finnish). Published by the UIAH Media Lab at: http://fle.uiah.fi/research/samun_selvitys.html Open Source Initiative - http://www.opensource.org Savannah - http://savannah.gnu.org/ Scardamalia, M. & Bereiter, C. (1993). Technologies for knowledge-building discourse. Communications of the ACM, 36, 37-41. Scardamalia, M. & Bereiter, C. (1994). Computer support for knowledge-building communities. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 3, 265-283. Stringer, E.T. (1996). Action Research - A Handbook for Practitioners. London: SAGE publications. |