[DG: Teaching & Learning] [DG: User Experience] templates redux

[Bruce D'Arcus]

On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 7:40 AM, John Norman <john at caret.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> I think this conversation is a little dangerous. Dangerous in the sense that two incomplete pictures of different parts of the landscape are being compared and found wanting.
>
> We should probably try to get Nico to weigh in, but our ambitions for OAE and templates are quite consistent with Bruce's ambitions and portfolio comments. However, we are not there yet (by a long way) and in the meantime we have something far simpler that is in the code/UI. This does not represent our end point, however, we will release something with this simpler model and Keli is trying to imagine how the simpler model can be useful at that release point.
>
> Unfortunately, we have a habit of describing things as 'Sakai OAE does (or does not) xxx' where a more accurate phrase might be 'the incomplete prototype is currently capable of (or not) xxx'. Current capabilities are not even necessarily on a linear path to our end goal. They are reflections of what we can achieve in known time/resource steps.

I guess I'd just suggest it would still help to very clearly define,
and use, core terms now (perhaps even with a glossary somewhere), so
people are on the same page in terms of where that distant endpoint
is.

I am, in the end, trying to read into these documents where OAE might
be in, say, three years; how one might create and share a syllabus,
for example, or how portfolio functionality might work.

If what Keli calls "page templates" is just intended as a
pre-configured collection of HTML and widgets, where we understand
widgets as simply blocks of dynamic functionality, then that's
probably good enough (e.g. clear, sufficiently flexible, etc.).

In that case, maybe I'm be wrong to think of structured content
editing as directly related to page templates at all: maybe that
belongs to widgets? E.g. maybe at some point we see a "syllabus"
widget?

Bruce