Happy Belated Halloween : Costuming your Content

Connexions now has two ways for you to dress up your content.

1. A fashionable mask

Connexions consortium members can add a touch of organizational mojo to their content using our new lens-based branding released on Halloween 2009. With lens-based branding, you create a lens, add your content to the lens, and then add your logo and a matching colored branding bar to the lens. Then ask your members and fans to visit your lens. Content in your lens that they visit after visiting your lens will retain your logo and branding bar. Readers we tested liked knowing who creates, sponsors, endorses or recommends the content.

Check out Rice University Press's branded lens.



2. A full costume

For those of you who want full control over the look of your content while still participating in the global education movement in Connexions, you can host custom viewing of your content on your own website. Get as creative as you want. You can see a demonstration of how Rice University Press' content might look on their website here. And below is a handy screen shot showing what it looks like.


To redisplay your content outside Connexions, you or someone you work with will want to know some technical information. Connexions structured format (XML) provides a clean and portable way to download and redisplay your content. We recommend creating a lens of the content you intend to redisplay so you can direct readers of the lens to your custom site and readers of your custom site back to the original versions in Connexions. You can also make use of the lens' atom feed to get a listing of your content, download the XML, and then use some cool transforms and styles to make it sizzle. Send email to our technical support team (techsupport@cnx.org) to get a link to a reference implementation to use for inspiration and guidance.

Why use Connexions? One project's reasoning

Recently, Mark Horner blogged on why the Siyavula project chose Connexions as the platform for the Primary through High School curriculum they purchased or created and put on Connexions to serve the needs of students and teachers throughout South Africa. They considered several different strategies and partnerships, but settled on Connexions after an extensive evaluation. My take on his reasons, outlined in the blog entry are

• Didn't want to build yet another repository
• Print is absolutely essential right now in South Africa because Internet connectivity is expensive and sparse. Connexions engine to automatically format materials into print-friendly PDF gave them print capability.
  
• Connexions licensing and authoring tools facilitate the creation of new companion materials and the maintenance, remix and reuse of the ones that Siyavula entered. Siyavula wants the materials to be community supported so the project can succeed and fade away.
  
• Vetting of content is supported (through lenses). Many teachers need assurance that material is aligned and approved. Connexions facilitates vetting by multiple agencies and organizations, because who you trust is context dependent.
  

Learn Chemistry from the New York Times Business Section

The December 5th business section of the New York Times shows John S. Hutchinson's Connexions module, Molecular Geometry and Electron Domain Theory, from his textbook Concept Development Studies in Chemistry. Dr. Hutchinson's Chemistry text is shown in the image of the eDGe ereader discussed in "Devices to Take Textbooks Beyond Text" in the business section of the New York Times on December 5th.

Dr. Hutchinson and colleagues use his Connexions textbook to teach Freshman Chemistry at Rice university, and high school teachers also use these materials, but one of the great things about open content is how many different contexts it can be used in and how widely the knowledge can spread. The Times article is generally about how upcoming e-book readers will be able to do more than show the words in a book. They will be able to show color where needed and play the media embedded in the text, providing an interactive experience for students. Connexions content will shine on these new devices.