Re: API for Edu-Quizzers

[Bruno Vernier <vernier@vc.bc.ca>]

On Sun, Feb 07, 1999 at 10:30:08AM +0300, rnd@sampo.karelia.ru wrote:

> Yes! It looks good. I have yet  to  look  closer,  but  I  have
> almost no spare time these days :-( I propose to merge QZB with
> what was already done by Bruno! 

Thanks Roman :-)

> So,  I  am  asking  how  do  we  call  the  at   last   ignited
> OpenSource quiz-software project? 

My intent is to "commoditize the quizzer" so that instead of concentrating
on building around a particular quizzer (same arguments for browsers), we
concentrate on building EDUML compliant data files for which EDUML-compliant
quizzers can be built on the fly .  So the name of the project is still
EDUML and the particular instance of the quizzer I created this weekend as
proof-of-concept does not really need a name but I have called the
executable "yaq" for "yet another quizzer".

    Alpha "yaq" is now on the net:  
    http://cran.seul.org/~vernier/eduml/yaq

For those who are just tuning in, the key innovation this weekend was to
include the API directly in EDUML with <rpc> elements.  The upshot of that
is that the basic components for any quizzers in any language are EDUML
elements themselves.  This means that we are able to parse out a quizzer
from an EDUML compliant file directly producing a small usable executable on
the fly.  So all quiz developers have access to the programming elements
designed by EDUML-compliant programmers.  Quiz developers need only have a
cheat-sheet of the API... and off we go building courseware for everyone by
everyone with everyone.  Users can send bug reports forcing us to improve
the quality of the items until we have a real gem. 

I don't currently have access to a PDA (i.e. Palm Pilot) but as their price
decreases, I predict they will become a big item in education and I imagine
students running our small EDUML quizzers right on the Palm Pilots and when
done, uploading results and downloading the next appropriate quizzer.

At the same time, beautiful GUI versions of the quizzers will be available
as soon as we translate the API in Tcl/Tk or GTK/Gnome or glade or Perl/Tk
or whatever.

Bruno

p.s. <eduml> details on: http://cran.seul.org/~vernier </eduml>