JEvents

 

Efforts Prior to 1997: WebLearningTools Research originally was a "garage lab" operation which I operated part-time on my (the PI's) extra income from contract computer programming and instructional design work.  There were a few interesting work-products suitable for improving distance learning which I created from 1990-1997, one of which was "stolen" by Adobe, Inc.  I said too much in the presence of an unidentified Adobe scout at a NextWorld conference in San Francisco.  Please enjoy their costly "Adobe Distiller Server" product which still falls far short of the vision I had in 1994 and begun to implement for a similar open source product, now a part of what I call the EOE Project.

Full-Time Efforts, 1997 to 2009: In 1997 I received a grant from the U.S. Dept. of Education to develop ideas I had proposed for Internet (web) server software technologies that would create "virtual schools", "virtual classrooms", and an "educational operating environment" (EOE).  The "virtual schools" and "virtual classroom" projects have been implemented and sold by others in what I call crude "generation one" Web 1.x and Web 2.0-beta versions at this writing.  But in this investigators opinion, the feature sets of these products are rudimentary at best and tedious to use and maintain for instructors and instructional content authors.  The instruction is just as fixed and inflexible -- and in some ways more difficult to change -- as is instruction or training made with the use of an ordinary textbook, hardcopy exercises and tests.

Please read my essays published elsewhere on this web site to explore my criticisms of the commercial and open source products available to-date in these areas.  See also the off-site web-links that I and others add to this site to elaborate on these technologies and their problematic technical, ordinary maintenance, and pedigogical issues.