From 1998-2001, I worked at DiscoverWare, Inc - a Calgary-based eLearning company with customers around North America, Europe and Australia. The “Nova” product line was a rich-media software simulation learning management system, based on 3-tier client/server communication. I built the client-side data and user activity tracking layers, which then communicated with a client user interface layer, and a server for long-term storage of user progress data.
Screen recording video demo
Screenshots of menus and content
Main menu - with status indicator to show content you’ve already viewed.
Mavericks is an exhibit curated by the Glenbow Museum, on the history of Alberta. The online version of the exhibit was created using Pachyderm, and I was the developer for the project. The online exhibit is used as part of the K12 curriculum in Calgary, and every grade 5 student in the city uses the website as part of their projects.
I was involved in the project as a Pachyderm developer, and worked with curators at the Glenbow to implement the web version of the exhibit (I did the authoring and publishing within Pachyderm, using content provided by the Glenbow). The web exhibit uses Flash - 2006 was a much different time.
Norman, D. (2013). A Case Study Using the Community of Inquiry Framework to Analyze Online Discussions in WordPress and Blackboard in a Graduate Course. (Master’s thesis, University of Calgary). Retrieved from https://darcynorman.net/thesis
TL;DR: students basically did what teacher asked them to do, without really caring what platform they were using.
Abstract:
Online discussions in a graduate level education course were compared using the Community of Inquiry framework and a Classroom Community survey within a mixed methods case study with concurrent triangulation of data sources. Discussion posts were published in two separate software applications: WordPress and Blackboard. Data collected included online discussion metadata, Community of Inquiry coding of online discussion content, survey responses from students, and an interview with the instructor to identify pedagogical decisions made in the design of the course. Content analysis of the discussion archives described differences in posts published to the two platforms, as well as differences in simultaneous indications of Community of Inquiry presences over time. Five new online discussion timeline visualization methods are presented. Key findings include an emphasis on pedagogical design over software selection in facilitating rich online discussions in the context of a graduate level course, although selection of software may provide signals to participants regarding the instructor’s expectations. Recommendations for reproducing similar research, identification of areas for future research, and recommendations for practice are provided.
Pachyderm was a collaborative project, led by the New Media Consortium. It involved the development of a rich media authoring platform, which would be used to create online interactive presentations from museum collections and teaching materials.
Designed for people with little multimedia experience, Pachyderm is accessed through a web browser and is as easy to use as filling out a web form. Authors upload their own media (images, audio clips, and short video segments) and place them into pre-designed templates, which can play video and audio, link to other templates, zoom in on images, and more. Once the templates have been completed and linked together, the presentation is published and can then be downloaded and placed on the author’s website or on a CD or DVD ROM. Authors may also leave their presentations on the Pachyderm server and link directly to them there. The result is an attractive, interactive Flash-based multimedia presentation.
After the Open Education conference in 2014, an after-conference hackathon even was hosted at the University of Mary Washington. During that event, I was able to interview several edtech leaders (with the help of David Kernohan and Andy Rush) to capture some of their insights into their work in edtech.
Built as a theme for CAREO, SciQ was launched as a way to provide access to digital resources within the context of the Alberta K12 provincial curriculum.
Main menu - with status indicator to show content you’ve already viewed.
