Update: Siyavula-Connexions Partnership

Back in November we announced an exciting new partnership between Connexions and the South Africa-based Siyavula project. This collaboration, with the support of the Shuttleworth Foundation, aims to make a full suite of learning materials available for all subjects and all grade levels (K-12).


Since we made that announcement the folks at Siyavula have been hard at work, with over 2,000 modules published already and roughly as many more expected over the course of the summer. In addition to these content contributions, the Siyavula development team has also designed and implemented several site features and enhancements, including improvements to the content lensing system and the ability for users to rate modules.

With so many quality learning modules and even more software features in the pipeline, this collaboration has already been a major success for both parties, opening the door for a global community of authors, educators, and students to take advantage of these learning resources. We want to extend a special thank you to the folks at Siyavula and the Shuttleworth Foundation, and look forward to a fruitful, long-term partnership.

Connexions author Ed Doering praised for innovative teaching

The Terre Haute Tribune-Star features an article on Ed Doering, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and author of the collection "Musical Signal Processing with LabVIEW". The article highlights Doering's innovation through online instruction using Connexions' modular, open system and National Instruments' interactive LabVIEW plugins.

From the article:

“It’s shocking to know that at any minute my voice is being heard in Shanghai [China], Manila [Philippines] or Santiago [Chile]. That’s what makes technology so fascinating,” Doering says. “I enjoy using new technology to reach out to students when they need it most.”

Rose prof embraces technology to expand educational horizons (Terre Haute Tribune-Star)

Ed Doering on Connexions

Using alternative images in print

Note that since this blog post was published Connexions has changed how authors should specify images for online vs. PDF views. (Authors do not need to update existing content; they have been updated automatically.) See this blog post for information on the new method.

Since the introduction of CNXML 0.6, Connexions authors have had a pretty cool but often overlooked tool at their disposal: Print-alternative images for media objects. In other words, authors can specify a video to embed online and an image to display instead when viewing the content in print. Let's take a look at how you can add print-alternative images to your interactive Connexions content!

Connexions totally re-vamped the way media elements are included and displayed back when CNXML 0.6 rolled out. The snippet below specifies an embedded video with an image alternative (the important part is highlighted):

<media id="building-on-past" alt="Building on the past.">
  <video mime-type="video/mpeg"src="Building_on_the_Past.mpg"
         autoplay="false" width="320" height="260" />
  <image mime-type="image/jpeg"
         src="building_on_the_Past_title_screen.jpg" />
</media>

Check it out: There is an image element under the video element! The media element contains both a video element and an image element.

When it comes time to generate a module's PDF, Connexions always looks for a second child of a media element to use as a print-alternative. If it doesn't find one, it either displays the media as-is or creates a reference to the URL of the media file, depending on the type of media element used.

So why would you want to include a print alternative for your online media? Consider these cases:

• You're writing an instructional module about playing the clarinet. You've embedded a tutorial video from YouTube but, unfortunately, it's hard to print videos into textbooks. So instead, you create an image of the fingerings demonstrated and use it as a print alternative.
• In that same clarinet module, you've embedded a beautiful sample of jazz clarinet music. For print, you specify an image of the sheet music for the piece performed.
• You use small PNG diagrams to illustrate some neuron interactions in your module about brain chemistry. Those diagrams look great online (and control the size and load time of your module) but look ridiculously tiny in print. Changing the print-width attribute for the image simply distorts the image and reduces its overall quality. So you create EPS vector images from your original diagrams and specify them as the print alternative. Connexions' PDF/print system then reads the EPS images and creates higher-quality diagrams for print that can be scaled to any size.

If you have any more bright ideas about how to use print-alternative images in Connexions, or have any questions about using print-alternative images, please feel free to contact us.

This one goes to eleven

... thousand, that is. Back in early May our team celebrated an important milestone: 10,000 modules and 500 collections published in the Connexions repository. In just seven weeks since, we have seen another 1,800 modules published - a 18% increase!

To put this into perspective, take a look at the graph below to get an idea of how quickly the Connexions repository has been growing lately:



As you can see, the graph has "gone vertical" - and with this surge in content we've seen increased activity to the site, with over a million visits a month.

In case you're wondering how we've managed to come so far in such a short amount of time, I'll let you in on a little secret:



And there it is - irrefutable proof that hiring me was the best thing that's ever happened to the open education movement. :)

But seriously, that sharp increase that you see starting in the summer of 2008 really did mark the beginning of something special. With an improved authoring interface, updated CNXML features, and a slew of high-impact content projects, Connexions has come a very long way in a very short amount of time, and all indicators point to continued growth.

And this, really, is the key to making this whole open education thing work. With more content comes more educators. More educators means more potential authors. More authors means more content, and so on. It's hard to ask somebody to write an entire textbook and give it away, but easy to ask someone to make small changes to existing works, and the more content you have the more likely they are to see something worth contributing to. And with more modules available in the repository, there are more bits and pieces for educators to work with when creating their own customized textbooks, courses, and learning materials.

We are on the verge of something truly amazing. With more and more administrators, educators, and learners taking advantage of free, open resources, we are all doing our part to make affordable, high-quality learning materials available to anyone.

Connexions updates Lenses feature, introduces module rating system

Connexions users can now take advantage of the new Lenses tab to view a list of all public lenses. Lenses offer members and organizations a way to publicly identify, affiliate themselves with, or endorse content by directing viewers to a hand-picked list of top-quality modules and collections. Click here to learn more about lenses.

Members can also provide feedback on a module's quality to other viewers using the new Module Ratings system. By rating a module on a scale of 1 (Poor) to 5 (Excellent), members can share their opinions with others to help identify the best content Connexions has to offer.

For questions about these and other Connexions features, please see the Help section or contact cnx@cnx.org.

Welcome to the Connexions Community!

Over the course of the past year, the Connexions (http://cnx.org/) community has undergone explosive growth. Thousands of learners, educators, and authors visit Connexions each day to exchange ideas, experience, and knowledge through a rich collection of open repository modules and collections. We strongly believe that this group of stakeholders is critical to the current and future success of the Connexions project.

In order to support the continued growth and development of this community, the Connexions community development team has designed a number of new web services designed to reach out to and engage existing online communities while remaining flexible, efficient, and responsive to community needs and wishes.

As the centerpiece of this community effort, the Connexions blog (http://blog.cnx.org/) will serve as a place for users to connect, interact, and explore the Connexions project (the main site at http://cnx.org/). This blog will contain a blend of updates, editorials, and tutorials, including:

• Featured content vignettes highlighting exemplary Connexions content
• Announcements for new site features and Connexions-related events
• Insider updates regarding current and future software development
• Friendly authoring competitions and calls for new content
• Tips and tricks to help members take full advantage of the site's features
• Video tutorials highlighting solutions to frequently asked questions
• Staff updates to show users what goes on behind the scenes at Connexions

In addition to visiting the blog, you can also follow updates through on Facebook and Twitter, or directly through the RSS feed. We also have plans to release a number of video tutorials on YouTube, photo albums on Flickr, and other related projects involving several popular internet services.

We hope you enjoy participating in this exciting new effort. We welcome any comments, questions, or ideas about how we can take advantage of these resources to serve your needs and interests and build a strong, engaged, and excited community of open education enthusiasts.

Thanks!

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