What
is it?
E-Slate is an exploratory
learning environment. It provides a workbench for creating highly dynamic
software with rich functionality,by non-programmers. Educational
activity ideas can be turned into software with minimal authoring effort in
the form of interactive Microworlds which contain specially designed
educational components. E-Slate components are provided as a kit
of pre-fabricated, interoperable computational objects. Software Microworlds can be very
easily constructed by plugging components in various configurations. The
behaviour of both components and Microworlds, can be programmed in a
Logo-based scripting language. E-Slate is currently based on the Java platform and related technologies.
What's special about
it?
E-Slate provides a revolutionary
way for creating highly interactive educational software in a rapid prototyping
manner with minimal effort and resources. Components
encompass domain-specific knowledge, playing the role of high-level
building blocks in the creative hands of “end users”. In
that way, Authors, curriculum designers and educators deal with “customizable
behaviors” rather than data-models, algorithms, and low-level
programming. Software construction
resembles assembling a “kit” rather than “writing a program”. Educational Software created with E-Slate
is:
- editable: the UI may be
restructured as required with simple drag-drop operations
- programmable: components may be
re-wired or scripted to extend or alter the provided functionality
- customisable: multimedia
content may be enriched or personalized by end-users
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What's
in it, for whom?
- Educators are provided
with quality and highly customisable educational software, in which
they can embed personalised content, restructure the UI, and even
alter or extend its functionality as required. In
that way, E-Slate largely supports the highly valued constructivistic
learning approach, according to which learning occurs while doing and
building artefacts, by actively exploring ideas and testing
hypotheses.
- Authors and Publishers
can develop products of sound educational value with drastically
reduced costs (comparing to current authoring methods). This is made
possible because: a) Components provide pre-packaged
domain-specific functionality which need not be re-implemented
again and again. b) Reusability of constructions (and effort!)
is exploited at very high degree at various levels: components,
templates, Microworlds.
- Developers can utilise a
number of E-Slate core services (APIs) to create E-Slate aware
components and thus get direct gain from the functionality already
implemented by existing components. In that way developers can
multiply their work by a factor related to the size of the E-Slate
component pool. Focused, small-team and distributed way of development
is encouraged.
What's behind?
E-Slate development is supported by national and EC R&D funds in
the context of various projects (Thranio [1999-01],
YDEES [1995-98] IMEL [1996-98], Odysseas
[1997-00], C3 [1998-00], Mentor
[1998-00]).
Refer to the "Resources" section for publications, reports and
other related materials.
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Download the interactive introductory video of E-Slate 