Thursday, April 23, 15:30 - 18:00, Location: Show and Tell Area B
C. Sidney Burrus, Richard G. Baraniuk
The technology for information organization, communication, storage, and use today is the book. It is a mature technology, having evolved over hundreds (even thousands) of years to the current state that is relatively stable and unchanging. The book and laboratory are the main technologies used by teachers in education today. Authors, teachers, students, publishers, book sellers, and a surrounding infrastructure have built a powerful system that has served us well even though the high cost of books, journals, libraries, etc., and the long time to publication are causing concern.
Current developments in computer hardware and software, in computer networks, in cognitive science, and in information theory indicate there are better systems for the generation, organization, storage, and use of information. Indeed, the object of this presentation is a system that we feel is a step towards a much better system based on electronics in addition to paper. It is the system of the Connexions Project started at Rice University in 1999 (http://cnx.org/). It is an example of what is called "Open Educational Resources" (OER).
There are three parts to the Connexions system:
(1) The information itself organized in the form of small modules that can be linked and searched. These modules use the XML protocol and are located in an open “repository” accessible globally over the (2) Internet, a network, or on a disk or CD ROM.
Tools that help create, maintain, share, and use these modules. These tools are built into a Web and browser accessible service specialized for this application.
(3) A community that develops and uses these tools and modules. The authoring community is modeled around the ideas of the open software projects but operate in a somewhat different environment.
The results of Connexions are on-line, interactive, dynamic learning objects, content for eBook readers, and printed and bound paper books which are always up to date and very low cost. The system is open to all authors, teachers, and learners yet has a quality assurance mechanism to insure the quality of peer-review.
The IEEE Signal Processing Society has started a pilot project to publish both educational and research content in Connexions. The "Show and Tell" demonstration proposed for ICASSP-09 will show examples of papers and books and demonstrate how to use Connexions (how to author modules, create collections and books, and use in teaching). It will demonstrate the educational value of dynamic interaction with an example of LabVIEW being used through Connexions.