User:ScottGeoffrey/GSoC 2009

This page was my personal application to Google Summer of Code 2009.
It never got completed, if you want to use any or all of this, please feel free.

Objectives

Objectives

I like the shift towards producing multiple forms of content from a single initial form provided by the PDFBook (and associate) extentions. I would like to broaden the potential forms of output, for example by giving more control over the details of the output PDFs or allowing output to presentation slides. Improve the variety and ease of creation of various materials from MediaWiki text. (ie. use existing articles to make more than PDFs) Develop a working tool for educators. Interact with multiple existing projects (Eclipse, MediaWiki, WikiEducator, PediaPress). Bonus: Contribute to the Eclipse wikipresent plugin.

Summary/Existing/History

The use of wikis in the development of open educational materials in WikiEducator (and potentially elsewhere) is growing. One thing that's missing is the ability to easily make slideshow presentations from the existing material. It is possible to transfer things by hand into a slideshow program, and even to share that slideshow freely, but with this approach the central wiki benefit of being able to use a markup language to specify content without specifying form is lost.

Wayne Beaton from the Eclipse foundation has developed a way to use MediaWiki syntax (what we use here on WikiEducator), to make slideshow presentations. Unfortunately, it's currently a plugin to the code development environment Eclipse and not in a form easily useful to educators. The description of the plugin in it's current state is here on Wayne's blog, and there's a video demonstration of it in use here.

First, I'd like to gauge interest in having a tool like this available for (wiki)educators. To do this I would need to ask the questions: Would educators find such a tool useful? And are there existing tools like this that I haven't run across yet?

Since there seems to be some similarity in roles/functionality of this tool and the Download-to-PDF function there might be a way to leverage the existing functionality there. I'd really like to gain a better understanding of how the to-PDF extension on WE works. It seems that it's based off the Collections MediaWiki extension (now renamed to Book extension) developed by PediaPress.

Alternatively, I've been told that it would be possible to pull the plugins out of eclipse and into a Rich Client Platform application (Whatever that means... :).

So, the functionality to make basic presentations from MediaWiki text exists, but in the wrong place. The WikiEducator community is not technically oriented, so asking them to obtain and use eclipse is irresponsible and unreasonable. I will explore ways to make this functionality available to them, as well as what can be done to improve and generalise the existing extensions and plugins.

Activites

Before

What I plan to do before applying in order to gauge possible scope of the project for myself. What can be done, how long it might take, and whether I can reasonably attempt to provide a solution.

TodoItem

Todo:

Get the wikipresenter and the mylyn plugins for eclipse. Experiment.

TodoItem

Todo:

Network for mentors. There are several groups that will end up being involved in the project and GSoC officailly asks for one. I might: officially be under one project, with contacts in many. obtain a mentor through Google special application for students without specific mentors explore the possibility of having multiple partial mentors and being very self-directed.

Proposed

This is what I propose to do if the application is accepted. Subject to change of course.

TodoItem

Todo:

Develop a blog to record process and progress. This has been done before as part of a previous GSoC project, other open source projects, and is something I'm exploring with the others over in the MyHomeYourHome: Tiny House Project.

TodoItem

Todo:

Learn the ins and outs of mwlib over at PediaPress. Jim Tittsler on WikiEducator has offered helpful pointers in the past, and uses mwlib in some scripts of his own.

TodoItem

Todo:

Extract the existing wikipresent functionality from eclipse into a Rich Client Application. David Green has offered to help me integrate with the Mylyn WikiText project.

TodoItem

Todo:

Test that the RCP works for many platforms by releasing it to the WE community and develop a better understanding of how a tool like this might be used (ie. what functionality is useful, what can be removed, and what is necessary to add). Part of this will include educating wiki educators on how to use it and exploring use scenarios.

TodoItem

Todo:

Explore integrating the slideshow functionality into a MediaWiki Extension. Perhaps a modification of the Collections/Book/Collection Extentions. Collections Extension | Book Extension | PDF Book Extension