The purpose of this document is to define a description and guideline for creating a functioning authoring tool that can be used to test early implementations of SAIL unit, curriculum and POD authoring. The proposed tool is not necessarily the tool that will end up in the users hands(if that is desired), but an internal version that we can effectively test authoring scenarios and the SAIL/POD authoring framework. However written well enough, it come out as a tool that ships with SAIL.
The ultimate vision for this tool is for it to be wysiwyg, having the ability to drag and drop components onto a canvas, connect them, press a button and you have runnable unit.
Stages for this design can be:
- Create an interface design - This includes creating something (screen shot, mock up...) that shows where draggable components, script editor, etc..will lie. Something everyone can agree on since people will be seeing it alot.
- Create initial Java POD framework- Create initial Java framework for developing POD's and generating units from them.
interface design and creating the initial POD framework can be done in parallel - Create prototype Milestone 1 - Milestone 1 will be a just an editor for script creation with the ability to generate a unit or curriculum and add it to a repository (DB). The purpose of this milestone is to have a complete authoring process from creation, editing, generation to storage. This milestone can be further decomposed into steps:
1. Create tool with basic editing abilities - This includes making a simple script editor with cut/paste abilities.
2. Hook in the POD framework - This includes taking an edited script and generating output to the user.
3. Allow export/import to repository - This includes having the user save a work in progress to a local or remote location and having the ability to resume later. - Create prototype Milestone 2 - Milestone 2 will have the ability of milestone 1 but with the added capability of dragging and dropping POD's on to a canvas, connecting them and generating a unit without manually editing a script. Initially, only a couple of POD's can be available to be D&D'ed. We can add more as we develop the framework and the tool. As we explore this option it can open the door for thinking on PML(Pedogogica Markup Language). It is a good way to get our feet wet into Java based wysisyg authoring tools.