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tyggerjaiHaving spent weeks ranting about IMS Learning Object specs, and how utterly useless they are, at least, in the back of my mind, I knew that at least there *was* a spec, and that there was a whole world of people out there that used, supported and followed it - in principle, at least. This morning, not only have the IMS released the QTI v.2 spec - that is apparently *not* backwards compatible with v. 1 and is in fact, apparently, a major rewrite (Have I read it yet? Why no, no I haven't, because there are 8 documents, and if I know the IMS, they'll all be ±50 pages. I don't have time. Why do I not have time? Because I'm too busy trying to understand and implement the IMS LO spec, which suffers from some wierd academic mindset that says "Hey, these Learning Objects can be pretty damn complex, so we'll add something to the spec that gives LO creators the ability to add tags to the metadata to concisely articulate the complexities. But that might be too hard. So we'll make them *optional*".
You fucking what??
The entire *point* of an imsmanifest document is to describe and define the content, preferably including pointers as to the logical connections between the resources. But no, let's make it all optional (thus guaranteeing that no-one uses it), and make people who have to parse the objects *guess* how the structure relates, thus NEGATING THE ENTIRE POINT of the manifest file.), but everyone else in the small, small world of my core specialty seems to have woken up and said "You know, this e-learning thing? Let's not bother, eh?". CETIS have only just managed to agree that e-Portfolios are a good idea. Now that they've agreed that they're a good idea, perhaps they'd like to work with the IMS to get a formalspec out, so that we know what they're supposed to *do*. Except that that would require CETIS and the IMS to decide what they're supposed to do, and that's probably far too hard. Of course, it's going to wind up like every other damn spec - "Well, it does everything, in theory, but it's all optional."
Gar. Mr. Wizard, I think I'd rather be a coot.
sol.
.
You fucking what??
The entire *point* of an imsmanifest document is to describe and define the content, preferably including pointers as to the logical connections between the resources. But no, let's make it all optional (thus guaranteeing that no-one uses it), and make people who have to parse the objects *guess* how the structure relates, thus NEGATING THE ENTIRE POINT of the manifest file.), but everyone else in the small, small world of my core specialty seems to have woken up and said "You know, this e-learning thing? Let's not bother, eh?". CETIS have only just managed to agree that e-Portfolios are a good idea. Now that they've agreed that they're a good idea, perhaps they'd like to work with the IMS to get a formalspec out, so that we know what they're supposed to *do*. Except that that would require CETIS and the IMS to decide what they're supposed to do, and that's probably far too hard. Of course, it's going to wind up like every other damn spec - "Well, it does everything, in theory, but it's all optional."
Gar. Mr. Wizard, I think I'd rather be a coot.
sol.
.