Martin Terre Blanche on ATutor OS Collaboration Tool
Martin Terre Blanche writes in his blog, Collaborative Learning Environments
The people who made ATutor (University of Toronto's Adaptive Technology Resource Center) have now created ACollab "a fully accessible, open source, multi-group, Web-based collaborative work environment" which they say is "ideal for groups working at a distance developing documentation, collaborating on research, or writing joint papers, and ideal for online educators who wish to add group learning activities to their ATutor courses".
I gave the demo a very brief try-out. The design is generally simple and fairly elegantly brings together some of the obvious things a group may need to work together: Member sign-on, group membership, member and group administration, events calendars, (threaded) discussion forums, simple text chat, and document libraries (i.e. the ability to upload, download, organise and comment on shared documents).
posted by Nancy White at 3:29 PM
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ATutor 1.5 Released
July 12, 2005
ATutor 1.5 has been released with many new features and enhancements. Some features to look for: modular Student Tools, a SCORM Run-Time Environment, extended theme capabilities, and the ATutor Handbook, among many others. Users are encouraged to upgrade their current systems.
Visit the ATutor site for a full list of features, a demo, and a download.
http://www.atutor.ca/atutor
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New Features in ATutor 1.5
*Bundled Help*: Student, Instructor, and Administrator documentation is now bundled with each installation of ATutor. Context sensitive help within ATutor links directly to the appropriate page in the Handbook. In the coming weeks expect an interactive documentation site with user tips and comments.
*Extended Themes* : Themes are now simpler to create and allow for more flexibility than before. The default look and feel of ATutor has been improved. Themes now inherit from the default, so it is possible to modify just a single theme file, such as a stylesheet or header file, to create a whole new theme.
*SCORM Run-Time Environment & SCO Manager* : Thanks to Matthai Kurian and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich for contributing an ATutor SCORM run-time environment (RTE) and SCO package manager. Add prepackaged, interactive, interoperable content to your courses. Initial support for SCORM 1.2 LMS-RTE3, with additional SCORM 2004 support coming.
*Course Tool Preferences* : Instructors can choose from the available student tools and menu modules, selecting only those tools and modules that are used in a particular course. Display tools in the main navigation, or link them from the course home page for quick access. Select tools that match different pedagogical approaches to teaching online.
*Multiple Administrators* : Create multiple administrator accounts, assigning specific privileges to each. Have one administrator manage users, have another manage courses, and have another manage the system configuration.
*System Preferences* : Edit the system configuration options (i.e. the config.inc.php file) from within ATutor.
*Require Email Confirmation* : Optionally require all newly created accounts to validate their email address before logging in.
*Directory* : Courses now provide a way for all students and instructors to find each other.
*Content Usage* : The Course Tracker has been replaced with the Content Usage tool, allowing instructors and students to track their usage.
*Master Student List* : Require newly created student accounts to be authenticated against a custom imported student ID/PIN paired list imported from a central registration database or directory service.
*Test/Survey Manager Upgrade* : When creating randomized tests from a larger pool of questions, choose to make some of those questions required.
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Visit the ATutor Support forums for help.
http://www.atutor.ca/forums/index.php
ATutor 1.5 Download
http://www.atutor.ca/atutor/download.php
ATutor 1.5 Demo
http://www.atutor.ca/atutor/demo.php
ATutor Documentation
http://atutor.ca/atutor/docs/index.php
Translators login to translate ATutor 1.5
http://www.atutor.ca/my/
See the Translator Documentation
http://www.atutor.ca/atutor/docs/translate.php
*ATutor 1.6 Released*
ATutor 1.6 has been released. Current users should upgrade their systems to take advantage of many bug fixes and security enhancements. The most notable change in this release is the conversion of the entire system over to UTF-8 languages.
*UTF-8 Upgrade in this Release*
This release marks a significant change for ATutor, moving the entire system over to UTF-8 characters for displaying language, an improvement to the previous system where different languages used different character sets. This move greatly improves support for multilingual ATutor systems, and for multibyte languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and others. It also allows content-authors to use mixed languages in their courses.
Details of the UTF-8 conversion can be found on the ATutorWiki
ATutor UTF-8 Conversion
http://wiki.atutor.ca/display/atutorwiki/UTF-8+Conversion
*New Features in This Release*
- A new look and feel
- Two new DIV based themes (default & greenmin)
- A custom course-icon utility
- The ability to customize individual course headers
- Recursive content release
- Upgrade to new ajax-based Google Search
- Tokens to personalize course emails
- The ability to present tests and quizzes one question at a time
- Upgraded Visual Editor with latest version of TinyMCE
... and a large number of refinements to existing features
A full list of changes can be found in the ATutor Changlog
http://www.atutor.ca/atutor/change_log.php
*Download ATutor 1.6*
http://www.atutor.ca/atutor/download.php
*ATutor 1.6 Demo*
http://www.atutor.ca/atutor/demo.php
*New and Updated Modules*
*Photo Gallery* : The Photo Gallery module has been upgraded to include the *Fluid LightBox* , which adds drag and drop reordering of images in the gallery. Fluid is a collaborative project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, in which a variety of user interface tools are being developed as an open source library that can be included with any Web-based learning or content development system. ( http://fluidproject.org )
*UTF-8 Conversion* : This tool takes older content created in ATutor, or in other content authoring tools, and converts it from other character sets to UTF-8. Upload an ATutor Content Package, or an ATutor Backup, to have them updated for the new UTF-8 based ATutor system.
*PHPDocumenter* : This is a developer tool used to extract the ATutor API documentation and present it in an organized, usable form, to aid in development of new ATutor features.
*Announcement Subscription* : Developed at the Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine, this module allows course members to subscribe to course announcements, and have them sent to their email address.
*ATutor Modules*
http://www.atutor.ca/atutor/modules/index.php
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